Time to be creative?

How does slowness contribute to achievement?

Tool of the mind: One technique is structured play… If you ask a child to stand still – maximum is one minute. If you have a make believe that the child is guarding the factory maximum increases to 4 minutes.

Achievement: defined not simply by any motion but motion to a specific fixed goal as opposed to sheer distance. There are usually different paths to a goal some quick, some slow, some dead end. Deciding which path is called planning and beyond this, the invention of new paths is where we meet creativity.

Speed: the faster we become the more we do automatically and the more we know about the task.

Slowness: the voluntary, heavyweight processes of achievment such as planning, refining, checking for errors and creativity. The faster the speed, the more knowledge and thus the more time left over for these executive functions to be used.

Rate of learning: How fast new information can be deposited into the bank account of automatic knowledge, allowing even more time for slow executive processes.