Don’t just move fast. Follow your curiosity.
If you consume from sources that are similar to mine, that is, the audience is creators, entrepreneurs, or builders, you may have heard a variant of “move quickly to be successful.” For instance, Sam Altman, former president of the startup incubator, Y-Combinator, wrote on his blog, “I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.”
I wasn’t sure what was missing from this advice when I began writing this post, but I found the answer after reflecting, asking friends, and reading an essay. But first, I must advocate for moving quickly.
Why move quickly
By moving quickly, we gain crucial information we did not know we needed. There’s a saying that practice and theory seem equivalent only in theory. In practice, the difference is real. For instance, a bias for action gets your foot in earlier in the cycle.
Just months ago, I applied for a work permit as an international student in early April, hoping for a quick response. But I got a reply after two months instead of one month, had I applied in early March. I didn’t move fast enough. Some resources are so scarce that arriving early is important, and no one will tell you.
PS: When we’re action-oriented, we also get luckier and learn more about ourselves by engaging with the world.
So the advice is to move quickly and take the initiative for better results. But this advice seems brash and borderline irresponsible when taken to the extreme, even if you try to be strategic and deliberate. Aren’t there constraints?
What to do about constraints?
Initially, I understood some constraints should be overcome. The fear of doing new or uncomfortable things. The courage to act despite uncertainty. And so on. But I imagined some constraints must be fixed — natural laws, government regulations, and personal values. I was wrong.
Natural laws are like the laws of physics or of the economy. We’re bounded by how many hours we have in a day or how much energy we don’t have when we’re sick. You’re generally not challenging the boundaries at this level unless maybe you’re working on deep science or tech.
In that case, action isn’t sufficient. Follow your curiosity. Greg Brockman tweeted that “A surprising amount of making a breakthrough is having a correct but at-the-time ridiculed belief that it must be possible.” We’re constantly unraveling the frontier of science, so the limits of natural laws may be more malleable than we think.
Government regulations are more obviously malleable. In fact, you can change government regulation through lobbying, like Sam Altman’s European pro-regulation escapade.
Finally, our personal values interact with societal norms to create all sorts of real and imaginary boundaries. Some actions are taboos, others are just annoying, and some are blind spots from negative self-talk in our heads. W showed me that communication is key in resolving these blind spots in our relationships.
Ultimately, each boundary is malleable, even if it involves lobbying, communication, or something else.
The missing sauce is curiosity.
Three lessons from my journey to unwrap the advice to move quickly:
Moving quickly indeed gets you first dibs and starts your learning earlier.
Communication is key to telling real taboos from social faux pas from blind spots.
No boundaries or barriers should stop you: follow your curiosity instead.
At the start of my search, I hoped to find concrete constraints that say this is definitely how to or not to move quickly. I now realize that is futile after reading Paul Graham’s terrific essay, “How to Do Great Work.“ (It may be the best writing you read all year)
The only real constraint you should have is to preserve your curiosity.
“There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work. It will not only drive you, but if you let it have its way, will also show you what to work on.“
- Paul Graham
Don’t just move quickly. Follow your curiosity.
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Thanks to Abdulrasaq Amolegbe, Cathy Chen, Wuntia Gomda, Pia Singh, Khushi Shelat, and Aliris Tang for reading drafts of this.