No time to stop and figure it out first

Get that thing up on a lift. And yes, the guy will have to get out of the car. (U.S. National Archives)

“If you’re in such a hurry, why don’t you ride your bike instead of walking it?”

“I don’t have time to stop and get on!”

I don’t remember where I heard or saw this joke, but it has stuck with me for decades. And I think of it often as a teacher and coach. What is it that causes so many of us to do things the hard way, pushing through without the necessary information or resources?

My math students will spend thirty-five minutes struggling with an exercise, skipping over the chapter that would take five minutes to read and the video that would take two minutes to watch (and certainly not asking for help).

Reluctant furniture assemblers put together the pieces in the wrong order, creating a detour that doubles time spent and quadruples the frustration — a detour that could have been avoided by taking just a moment to glance at the instructions.

Musicians play the same wrong sequence a dozen times in a row instead of patiently deconstructing the pieces at a slow tempo to get them right.

Our rush is clearly irrational. The things we do to try to move faster actually set us back, and the actions that would actually speed our progress are ignored.

My first task as a teacher is to try to help my students understand this, but I have found that there is an extraordinary amount of resistance to the idea that it’s worthwhile to invest in a moment of planning or learning prior to taking action.

When things are going well, we don’t want to stop. We then continue on our merry way without taking the time to reflect upon and evaluate our progress. Thus, we might unwittingly creep into unfamiliar or inhospitable terrain; we falter and stumble, and still we don’t stop because we’ve never developed the habit of doing so. We might even struggle to admit to ourselves that it’s become necessary. We believe that if we just keep pushing, we can get back to that feeling of breezy confidence that we had at the start.

Alternatively, students have never felt confident in this particular undertaking; it causes so much distress that they want to get it over with as quickly as possible, whether or not their effort actually amounted to anything.

Both issues are rooted in the same misunderstanding: We think that our success or failure is entirely dependent on our intrinsic knowledge and skill. Therefore, the support of additional resources is moot. We either have it or we don’t.

If we’re going to focus on our intrinsic knowledge and skill, then, we ought to pay closer attention. We need to carefully monitor how the work feels. If we have no confidence when we start, we have to slow down, choose a smaller task, or even back up to work on a foundational piece prior to pushing ourselves forward. And as we proceed, even when things are going well, we should be monitoring ourselves for the very faintest glimmers of frustration or boredom. These are clues that it’s time to take a break and regroup.

Ideally, in those moments where we allow ourselves to recognize that we are about to get frustrated — or that we can’t even get started because we don’t know what we’re doing — we can clock the fact that we do not actually possess all of the intrinsic knowledge and skill we need. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us. To gain new knowledge and skill, we can get help. Solutions range from hiring an employee or a coach to taking a class to watching an instructional video on YouTube to raising your hand to ask a question to simply reading the dang directions.

Time is rarely the problem — we waste far more time going down blind alleys than we do seeking support. For many of us, allowing ourselves to make use of the resources at our disposal is harder work than the task at hand. That, in itself, is a skill worth developing. It will pay off in all kinds of unexpected ways.