In defense of slowness.
There is a confusion amongst amateurs that speed is important for demonstrating mastery. This is true in every craft, and marks the amateur out from the professional. The amateur fakes speed, in that their speed is not a result of fluency but rather a jerky set of independently sped up actions.
There is also an illusion that speed demonstrates intelligence. "He's a bit slow on the uptake," is a common pejorative heard to describe someone that people think is stupid. Speed of response is often seen as a hallmark of someone who's "quick" or "sharp".
Speed of this type—that is, artificial speed—is the result of conscious effort. As the brain has a limited amount of conscious processing power (unconscious processing power has not been measured), the amateur trying to go fast inevitably detracts from their performance in other domains, as they are occupied with looking fluent.
The expert knows better than to rush, to move quickly without cause. Hurried actions are often not well thought through. Hurried thoughts are surface thoughts.
Slow deliberate forms are practiced by the expert, following well worn paths. The expert knows that rushing and moving deliberately lead to the same destination, only one leads to careless and preventable mistakes.
What some mistake for speed is, in fact, fluency. A practiced familiarity with craft so deep that it happens by instinct, the words tumbling from the lips of a master orator with nary a pause. The special forces have a phrase that perfectly embodies this attitude: "slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." The illusion of speed comes from automaticity, the hours of expertise collapsing a wave function into this moment, all at once.
The apocryphal anecdote goes that a woman approached Picasso in a restaurant and asked him to draw something for her, and he could name his price. When he drew something on a napkin and handed it her, he asked for $10,000. When she balked at the high price, saying "but it took you only thirty seconds to do that," Picasso replied, "no, it has taken me forty years to do that".
We are often ashamed of slowness, of speech and of thought, certainly of craft. We're so ashamed that to pause for even one or two moments to gather one's thoughts after being asked a question or in the midst of a speech is considered to be the height of embarrassment.
But there truly is no rush. There truly is no where to go and no reason to get there so quickly. There certainly is no reason to be what we're not, to pretend greatness when we are yet still a beginner, and look even more a beginner as a result.
There is an obsession with speed today, especially in the software world. Ship, ship, ship goes the mantra. Done is better than perfect. 80% is 100%.
But that's how you get millions of the same website, the same thoughts, the same attitudes. It's how you go so fast you skip over the waters of the mind, never stopping to sink in deeply and drink from the cool depths. It's how you become an automaton, treading the same paved roads that others have laid, rather than finding your own way through.
Perhaps, in the context of thought and craft, and not of combat, we may adjust the special forces motto:
Slow is deep. Deep is original. Original is valuable.
Go slow.