Slow down! This is going to be a long post, but it is worth you time. If you are in a rush, go down to the last paragraph.
In a world of a constant rush, who is doing the slow thinking for you?
THESIS
It’s not just your imagination. The pace of life is accelerating in spite of all of the conveniences that we are exposed to, such as airplanes and fast trains, quick cars, productive computers, smart phones, smart houses, Internet with its instant availability, dishwashers, laundry machines, mixers, smart and functional food processors, robotized lawn mowers and abundance of other tools that are supposed to free up the time. The same is the situation at work, where work processes, production schedules and pressure to commit to rapid decision-making require an immediate action. This trend is nurtured in the public culture with its rapid-fire news cycles and next-day delivery to “speed-watching” videos and the relentless pressure to be more productive, we are all caught in a current of increasing speed. While often exhausting, this trend is not arbitrary. However, a solid question retains its validity whether we recognize the rush or not: towards what are we all rushing… towards what and, most importantly, what for?
The rush culture is built by the environment around us. It builds on an interesting connection to the processes of our individual, internal thinking with an outcome which is not pretty. The persistent rush is the logical outcome of a powerful convergence of technological, economic, and social forces affecting our fast and slow thinking (processes described by Daniel Kahneman) in a way that makes sense, while making no sense. Such duality is absurd, but it seems that humanity as a kind and its individual agents somewhere along the way gave up and embraced all of the absurdities to be able to discern any and more importantly do something about it. Please, follow me and I will show you what I noticed in a minute or so.
For simplicity, let’s consider these three reasons why our world is systematically speeding up – the technological, economic, and social forces. I am sure, these dimensions are not exhaustive, but sufficient to see the pattern and patterns is what matters, when one tries to see a bigger picture.
Technology is the primary driver of acceleration, creating and then catering to an expectation of immediacy. It establishes the feedback loop of instant gratification. Do you remember the clicking sound of the modem on your Windows 95 PC dialing the network provider and how long it took to load a webpage or download a favorite song? We’ve moved from dial-up internet to 5G. A delay of a few seconds in loading a webpage or video is now considered unacceptable. This eradication of technological waiting has rewired our patience, making us expect the same instantaneous response from other facets of life. Now, couple that with social media and news feeds powered by algorithms that prioritize engagement. Content that is new, shocking, or controversial gets pushed to the top, creating a relentless, 24/7 news cycle. The race for clicks and views incentivizes a faster churn of information, leaving little time for reflection. On top of that, the wide spread of productivity software, communication platforms, and automation tools, which are designed to help us do more in less time, did not produce more free time for its users. In fact, we end up in the “productivity paradox”: instead of creating more leisure time, we simply fill the saved time with more tasks, raising the baseline expectation for output ending up in a ferocious rat race chasing the undefined “better life”.
Although technology is the primary drive, the incentives for the acceleration are deeply economical. In a hyper-competitive global market, speed is a currency. This is true on so many levels starting with the individual abilities to do own tasks faster, to a micro-level of a firm delivering a product, macro-level of economies and all the way to the super-macro-level of global trade. Technology sets the foundation but economy pays the way for the rat race towards gaining a competitive advantage.
On individual level, besides creating a feeling of being busy, economic incentives put intense pressure on individual performance. An income affected by the speed and volume of output, whether recognized in a KPI or not, sends tacit messages to the subconscious: “the clock is always ticking” so any minute spent on anything else be that waiting in line for a coffee, relaxing with family and friends or acquiring a hobby is a deflection with associated costs; another message is that “the volume is more important that quality” destroying the beauty of craftsmanship over the speed and output (although nobody will ever release the pressure of delivering the good result); yet another message is the expectation of the “constant availability”. The individual is expected to hustle as an owner. It is no longer just a job – it is “your” company, – thus, blurring the life-work boundaries with potential effect on future wealth. The pressure to “Grind for the Exit” towards the next step of a better career prospect or higher pension creates a message of “crunch time”, which is not temporary anymore but takes a state of permanent crisis. The most powerful outcome is that the external economic incentives become the bits of a narrative of an internalized pressure. The individual starts to believe that “if I’m not optimizing every minute, I’m falling behind,” “my value as a person is tied to my productivity and output,” “rest is a reward for exhaustion, not a necessary part of being human.” Coupled with the understanding that technology enables tracking of literally every move we establish the grounds for the panopticon effect with constant low-grade anxiety and self-policing. In the end, the economic incentives of rush culture don’t just pressure our performance; they reshape our very identity, convincing us that our speed is our worth.
In terms relevant to businesses, being first to market with a new product, feature, or trend can define the success of a company or an economy. This creates immense pressure to develop, produce, and ship faster than competitors. Technology is the backbone also for the supply chains and logistics rapid operation. The rise of companies like Amazon has conditioned consumers to expect near-instant fulfillment. The “last-mile delivery” race is a direct economic battle where speed is a primary differentiator and a key driver of consumer choice. Add to that the buildup in the shareholders’ expectations of their abilities to collect the return on their investments faster. The reasoning is quite clear – if the economy is moving fast, I should also get the return on my investment faster. In publicly traded companies, the demand for quarterly growth creates a relentless focus on short-term gains and rapid iteration. Slowing down is often perceived as falling behind – a risk that markets punish rapidly and without mercy. Extrapolating to the level of a single economy or even a few of them would add a completely new level of complexities to the discussion but the pattern is obvious event without too many details – the rush and immediacy pays well but has the heavy invisible cost.
Technology and economics create the capability for speed, but the mass culture nourishes the desire for it. As such, the globalized online mass e-culture creates a self-reinforcing system closing the loop within which the individual loses his agency being swiped by the uncontrollable current of daily routines. The anxious, nagging feeling, the fear of missing out, that others might be having rewarding experiences, making social connections, or accessing exciting opportunities from which you are absent triggers a subtle anxiety that grows bigger the more one gives in to it. The natural effect can be called none less than a cult of busyness. In many professional cultures, being “busy” has become a status symbol—a visible sign of importance and productivity. This social pressure encourages people to pack their schedules and prioritize fast-paced activities, sometimes at the expense of depth and quality. This becomes especially vivid when observing trends in fashion, music, and trending challenges that cycle online at an unprecedented rate, fueled by TikTok, Instagram and other short-form media platforms. The fear of missing out drives continuous engagement, as people struggle to keep up with this mass e-cultural landscape that is constantly evolving. Such culture of rush plays a good hand to those advancing the optimization of self. The personal development and wellness industries often frame self-improvement as a form of optimization—doing more, achieving more, and becoming your “best self” in record time. This internalizes the pressure to speed up our own personal growth and life milestones.
The trend toward speeding up is not a conspiracy but a self-reinforcing system. Technology enables faster economies, which in turn foster a culture of immediacy, which then demands even faster technology. It is a feedback loop with tremendous momentum. While this acceleration has brought undeniable benefits (to some) in efficiency, access, and innovation, it forces us (the rest) to confront a critical question: in the relentless pursuit of doing things faster, are we sacrificing the time required to do things well, to think deeply, and simply to experience life. Understanding the reasons behind the great acceleration is the first step toward consciously deciding where we, as individuals and as a society, want to accept the given or apply the brakes.
ANTI-THESIS
While talking about the brakes, I am not talking about slamming the brakes until we completely stop. This is impossible no matter how plausible that might sound. I am thinking more of slowing down enough to be able to grasp what is going on around and what one should rather do with what is on display. Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” is a masterpiece that brilliantly breaks down how our minds work when considering the decision-making under time pressure. The core idea is that our thinking can be understood as two separate “systems” that operate in very different ways.
Before showing how these apply to our rush culture, let me briefly explain how I understood the way a human mind works. As beautiful as it is, a human mind is a system that runs in of two modes, the (sub-) System 1 and (sub-) System 2 or put in other words the “fast-” and “slow-thinking” modes. Therefore is the name of the Kahneman’s book.
The fast thinking mode is the automatic mode, ran by impulses and daemons that one has inherited from the ancestors or developed over his life time. It is the fast, intuitive, and unconscious in its nature system. It is fast, but “stupid” in the sense that it gives as the output of that what one has put in – if “1” goes in, “1” goes out. Such mode reminds a lot the autopilot mode enabling primarily the mental reflexes. The fast thinking mode is a brain’s default setting. It’s running all the time in the background, handling thousands of tasks normally without ever attracting unnecessary attention. Breathing, sweating, heart beat tempo management, muscle tension to keep one’s body position, reading the environment, completing routine tasks or doing simple math calculations – that’s its job. In short, it’s perfect for well-practiced routines, snap judgments, and survival instincts. It uses mental shortcuts (heuristics) to make quick calls. Such mode greatly reduces the processing loads of a brain with the use of templates and scripts. However, in such speedy thinking mode there is a risk of being prone to biases and quickly jumping to conclusions. When necessary, the human brain loves to create coherent stories from limited information, even if the story is completely wrong and is easily swayed by cognitive biases.
On the opposite, the slow thinking mode is the manually engaged mode, ran by individual’s reason, the so-called deliberative, thoughtful agent, the cautious commander – slow, analytical, logical, and effortful. This mode is engaged when the consciousness faces some task that is outside of the automatic response range requiring focused attention. A simple example when it kicks in would be multiplying 170×24. Try doing it in your mind now. If you needed to stop and freeze for a moment to think – this was switched on the slow thinking mode. Any time you need to choose which car or house to buy, what to wear for a friend’s reunion, try hearing someone’s voice in a noisy room, listen between the lines in a conversation or maintain self-control in a lit up situation – you refer to the slow thinking mode. In short, it’s the tool for complex calculations, careful reasoning, and any task that requires deliberate concentration and self-control.
The lazy. Truth be told, the System 2 operation is mentally exhausting and slow, while our brain is lazy and likes to conserve energy. For this reason, our brain is happy to let fast thinking run the show as much as possible often endorsing the quick, intuitive judgment without doing the hard work of verifying it. Only when a problem requires significant focus, the modes switch. Yes, the two systems work together, but their partnership is the source of both our brilliance and our errors. Most of the time, System 1’s quick guesses are correct and incredibly efficient. This makes us overconfident in our intuitive responses paving the ground to some bitter lessons of humility. In addition, many cognitive biases (like anchoring, availability, and confirmation bias) originate from brain’s reliance on mental shortcuts. The slow thinking is supposed to be checking on these biases, but it’s often asleep at the wheel.
The simple takeaway is the importance of general awareness about which system is in charge. For quick, everyday tasks and gut feelings – trust your well-trained fast thinking. For important decisions, statistical reasoning, and profound meditations and goal-setting – one must consciously activate the lazy System 2 thinking. This means slowing down, questioning the first instinct, and doing the hard, analytical work. Exactly at this point, we need to turn back to the Culture of Rush I started with – here is hidden the trap of living in a fast-thinking mode. By giving up the controls, we become nothing but another animal driven by the instincts and reflexes that we acquired during our upbringing in our kindergartens, schools and higher educational institutions. This is the obvious danger in rush we cannot identify and counter.
SYNTHESIS
We’ve established that our world is in a state of perpetual acceleration, driven by a powerful trio: technology that prizes speed, an economy that rewards it, and a culture that glorifies it. Simultaneously, Daniel Kahneman’s work shows that our brains operate with two systems: the fast-thinking and slow-thinking. Now, let’s put these two ideas in a room together and see what happens.
The modern world, with its endless notifications, bottomless feeds, and pressure for instant responses, is a System 1 paradise. It’s engineered for snap judgments, quick scans, and immediate gratification. It constantly presents us with a firehose of stimuli perfectly suited for our automatic, impulsive sprinter. This same approach is nourished at a work place: endless meetings, bottomless mailbox full of requests, deadlines and deliverables, problem and immediate solution pressure requiring implication of slow thinking at the fastest pace. As a result, the System2 is being systematically overwhelmed. The constant demand for speed and the sheer volume of decisions we’re expected to make exhaust our limited capacity for deliberate thought. In a world that never stops talking, there’s no quiet room left for slow thinking.
So, we default. And what we default to? Exactly, the fast thinking – impulses, biases, reflexes. We outsource. We let the (AI) algorithms, the defaults, and the social media or work team crowd do the heavy lifting. Netflix/YouTube/TikTok/Instagram recommends what to watch next, so you don’t have to ponder your true preferences (System 2’s job). Amazon, AliExpress or Temu suggests what you might want to buy, based on what other impulsive buyers purchased. Your news feed curates a reality for you, telling you what’s important, so you don’t have to critically evaluate sources. Brand loyalty becomes a System 1 shortcut to avoid researching every product. Social media influencers tell you what to think, so you don’t have to wrestle with complex issues yourself. We are surrounded by external systems that are happy to act as a surrogate System 2.
And this leads directly to the unsettling, vital question: so, if you are bound to be thinking in System 1, who is doing the System 2 thinking for you . Is it a tech company whose primary motive is engagement and profit? Is it an algorithm designed to show you more of what you’ve already liked, creating a comfortable but narrow world? Is it a media outlet with a specific political slant? Is it the loudest voice in your social circle?
The trend of acceleration isn’t just making us busier; it’s actively offloading our most careful, critical, and deliberate thinking onto external forces. Recognizing this isn’t about rejecting technology, but about reclaiming a sense of agency.
It’s about consciously deciding: When will I slow down and activate my own System 2? When will I do my own thinking, rather than accepting the thinking that’s been done for me?
In a world that’s constantly appealing to your fast-thinking self, the most radical act might be to deliberately, and stubbornly, be slow.
Take a minute and do your own inventory. Consider, when were you taking a moment to slow down and think, notice the abundant blessings you are surrounded with, notice the patterns of you thinking and behavior and whether they truly serve your interests at all.