The Slow Way Is the Fast Way
This post comes from a book I am working on called Research and Writing for Music History Students: A Field Guide. While the book is aimed directly at students in the music history sequence, the concepts in it apply to anyone who is looking to accomplish research. In this excerpt from the “Principles” section of the book, I discuss how to avoid making costly mistakes in your research process.
If you take the time to do things right, it will seem like you are moving slowly at first, but you will save time later, at the finish line, when it counts most.
The Tortoise and the Hare Practice Piano
“You are going too fast. Slow down so you don’t introduce new mistakes and have to fix them later.”
This is a phrase I have said to my eleven-year-old son countless times during his piano practice sessions. If you are a musician, you have probably heard something similar as you have learned to practice your own pieces. I have been teaching my son piano for several years now, and it has been a rewarding experience to see him grow.
But I get frustrated at times when he tries to rush his practicing. Here’s what tends to happen:
He plays through a passage at a quicker tempo than he should.
This leads to him making mistakes, such as an incorrect note or fingering.
When he does this several times in a row, with the same mistake, he is actually learning the mistake as part of his mental representation of the piece.
That means that he will have to unlearn the mistake later, which I know from experience can be very challenging to do.
In fact, in my experience it is much more time consuming—not to mention mentally taxing—to unlearn a mistake than it is to slow down and learn a passage of music correctly the first time. From my detached perspective as his teacher, I can see clear as day that in his rush to move forward, he is actually pushing the finish line farther away. By introducing mistakes, he is lengthening the overall distance of the race.
The familiar fable of the tortoise and the hare reminds us of the benefit of slowing down. The tortoise and the hare run a race. The hare sprints off toward the finish line, while the tortoise plods ahead. The hare, tired from his sprint but confident in his lead, sits down to rest, and the tortoise crosses the finish line while he sleeps. The moral: slow and steady win the race.
When I reflect on my son’s tendency to try to rush things, and the fable of the tortoise, I inevitably end up turning the spotlight back on myself. I know that when I was learning piano at his age and through my studies in college, I did the exact same thing. And this tendency of mine to “add distance” to the finish line because of an urge to rush ahead was not limited to practicing my instrument. The more I think about it, the more I realize that slowing down to do the important things right matters in all aspects of my life.
Two Statements
Read the following two statements. In fact, read them twice, and then consider how much you agree or disagree with each one. You can be honest. No one will know your answers but you.
When it comes to something I care about, I believe that taking time to do important things right will save me time later and lead to a better result.
When it comes to something I care about, I always take the time to do important things right, in order to save time later and lead to a better result.
If you agreed one-hundred percent with both of these statements, then you can skip the rest of this chapter with no guilt. Just keep doing what you are doing.
If you disagreed with both of these statements, read on. But this chapter might not be as useful to you if you don’t yet believe that investing time up front to set up important tasks can benefit you later.
If you agreed with the first statement, but acknowledged that you don’t always take the time that you should to do the important things right, then this chapter is for you. Now that you have identified a gap between your belief and your action, you can work to close that gap. In what follows, I will describe the philosophy of “the slow way,” apply it to your research process, and share with you some common pitfalls to avoid.
“The Slow Way Is the Fast Way”
My son and I have come up with a shorthand way to signal when he needs to be a tortoise rather than a hare. Any time he is rushing through a task, I say “The slow way is the fast way,” and we have immediately called up between us a series of discussions and strategies around taking the time to do things right and not losing quality.
I have found this proverb so useful that I now apply it to any important tasks in my life, from teaching, to writing, and especially to the process of research.
Here is the principle:
If you take the time to do things right, it will seem like you are moving slowly at first, but you will time later, at the finish line, when it counts most.
Or in other words:
The slow way is the fast way.
When is the Slow Way most beneficial to use?
when learning a key skill that you will use repeatedly in your life and career
when starting a new project
when accomplishing a task in the 20% of your 80/20 analysis
When would using the Slow Way be counterproductive?
when accomplishing unimportant tasks
when doing insignificant tasks as a way to procrastinate
when working on a task that you will only do once
When you take the “Slow Way,” it means that you approach a task with a long-time perspective, taking the time to do a little extra now, so that you set your future self up for success.
Application to Research
What does The Slow Way have to do with the research process? Let’s get specific and practical to consider ways that this approach can save you time and headaches—and even perhaps save you from a spectacular crash-and-burn experience when completing your music history research project.
Here are some common ways that researchers cut corners.
Reading the first book or article that pops up on their topic instead of searching broadly and evaluating the available resources.
Beginning the research collection phase without sufficiently narrowing a topic.
Not capturing the complete bibliographic information of a source when beginning to take notes on that source.
Failing to write down the page numbers of important ideas when collecting research notes or quotes in a source.
Not setting up a simple digital file system to collect notes and resources on your project.
Not setting up a folder in Zotero or another reference manager to capture all sources.
Not checking all bibliographic information of a source when inputting it into Zotero or another reference manager.
Not carefully indicating in your research notes which are direct quotes from the source, and which passages are paraphrases.
Not taking the time during the note-taking process to paraphrase the ideas of others in your own words.
And there are many more. Avoiding these mistakes can sometimes be very simple, but can save lots of time in the end. Perhaps the best example of this is writing down page numbers when taking notes on a source. When you cite the ideas of others in your paper, you will need to include a page number in your citation. Noting the page number when writing research notes adds five or ten seconds at the most to the process.
But if you did not write down the page number when taking notes, and then want to cite that idea in your paper, you have to go on a search for that quote to find it. This can take a few minutes in the best case, if the book is nearby and you remember which chapter or section the idea came from. But if the book is back at the library, or you don’t remember where the quote was in a book, you will waste valuable time tracking it down. Even worse, if you also didn’t write down in your notes what book the idea came from, you will spend even more time re-reading or skimming all of your sources in a frantic search to find that one key quote.
Somehow, it always seems that the quote or idea that seemed insignificant when you were taking research notes, and therefore didn’t bother to properly record, becomes that key idea or piece of evidence upon which your argument hinges.
Sometimes cutting corners can cost a lot more than just time. It can cost you your academic career. If you end up plagiarizing the ideas of others because you didn’t properly record them in your notes, you could fail an assignment, fail the class, and even get a permanent blemish on your academic record. That extra five or ten seconds when taking notes can help avoid inadvertent plagiarism.
If you do the opposite of the list above, you will be on your way to the benefits of the Slow Way.
take the time to narrow your topic and develop keywords for your search before jumping into reading sources. See What to do in the first two hours of research on your music history topic.
When taking notes, always take the time to capture complete bibliographic information of a source, and put the source in your reference manager.
When taking notes on a source, clearly distinguish quotes from paraphrases, and always write down the page number where you found the ideas.
Don’t Overdo it
There is a balance to following the Slow Way approach. Remember that the point is to slow down on the important tasks so that you can speed up later. Slowing down when taking research notes will mean that you can draft your paper more quickly, since you will have all the necessary materials at hand.
There are two areas where it is common to misapply the Slow Way approach. The first is using the Slow Way on tasks that are insignificant. Taking time to set up your research notes system in a clear and organized way is worth spending extra time on. Spending hours choosing which brand of notebook to use, or which pen will provide the perfect comfort is not.
The second common mistake is using the Slow Way as an excuse to procrastinate, and avoid doing the work at hand. It can be very easy to think that you have endless work to do in order to set up the perfect research system (or practicing, writing, or performing system, for that matter), and use that as an excuse to avoid working on the tasks the system was built to facilitate. A good measure is this: if you are spending more than 15–20% of your time on setting up or tweaking your system, you are spending too much.
The Finish Line
In the fable of the tortoise and the hare, the hare seems to have the advantage at first. But the hare’s hyperactivity is just an illusion.
In my own retelling of this fable, I imagine the two animals on the starting block, at the moment when the race begins. The starter pistol fires, and the hare sprints off immediately in the direction that seems best. The tortoise, left in the dust, slowly turns to his left and picks up a map and charts the best course to the finish line. While the hare travels the road faster, he also takes wrong turns, runs into dead ends, and has expended far more energy than is necessary. The tortoise, on the other hand, takes the most direct path to the finish line, checking each turn against his map, and arrives first.
When it comes to the important things, you have to slow down at first to speed up later.
Want to read another excerpt in the Research Field Guide? Check out my other post: Exactly What to Do in Your First Two Hours of Research.
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