Slower

I usually take the train to office. Here is a breakdown of the state of my mind during the journey -

• 10 min walk to station, stand on the right platform - active
• Less than 5 min waiting - mostly on auto-pilot
• 5 min train ride, mostly standing - active, looking out for the right stop
• 5 min walk to switch tracks - active
• 5 min train ride, mostly standing - active, looking out for the right stop
• 10 min walk to office - active

Quick predictable rides, fast walk, listening to an audiobook @ 1.5-2x. I actively and consciously drive most of the journey.

Contrast that with a bus ride to work -

• 5 min walk - active, but much less than walk to train.
• 1-15 min wait for bus - active, need to look out for and board the right bus. Can be minimize by planning ahead / looking at bus schedule.
• 15-30 min bus ride, usually sitting - mostly auto-pilot, hard to miss the stop, many more visual cues to work off. Very passive.
• 5 min walk to office - active

High variance. Duration of bus ride varies based on traffic, time of day, bus schedule. When I am on the bus / waiting for it, there is nothing I can do to speed the journey up. It's a passive journey, with few decisions, mostly done on auto-pilot.

Both journeys, if planned right, take roughly the same time.

My parents visited me recently, and my dad was curious as to why I took the train when the bus ride was so much easier!

Well, the bus ride killed my momentum, I felt sleepy at the end of it. The train ride switched my brain on for the day ahead. Built momentum, woke me up, thanks to all those mini-decisions I had to make.

That's what I told him.

But really? The more I think of it, the train ride forces me to flex my decision muscle early on in the day. I reach the office running, continue running because I want to use my momentum, and then I take the train back (still running), reach home tired, and sleep. Repeat.

If I can't sit calmly for 20 mins without losing momentum, perhaps I need to slow down. The more I reflect, the more I feel I was taking solace in the busy-work that taking the train offered. If I spent my prime morning time looking out for MRT stops, isn't that time lost to thinking about bigger problems?

I take the bus now. I walk slowly and deliberately to the bus stop, listen my audio book at 1x speed (I used to do 1.5-2x) on my trip to work. Then I walk - slow and deliberate to office. I arrive fresh, thoughtful and composed. On my way back, I sit and reflect. Let my mind wander.

Sometimes, you need to slow down.

Faster

Sometimes, you do better when you increase difficulty.

I occasionally play Flight Commander when taking a quick break. It's a simple game - direct aircrafts to airstrips by drawing a path and make sure the planes don't crash into each other. Each plan landed gives you a point.

I was terrible at it, till I noticed the ">>" button at the bottom. It doubles the speed of the game, technically making it twice as hard to play. I started using it to get through the easy initial stages, and slowed the game down again once there were too many planes in the air. I was still terrible at it.

One day, I decided to play an entire game at double speed and see how far I could go. I tripled my high score. Every time I played at double speed, I scored 3-4 times my normal scores.

That got me thinking, and I think a couple of factors are at play here 

1. I lack patience and get distracted easily hence losing focus. 

2. I get into flow when I make the game faster. Hence gaining focus. 

Sometimes, to increase output, we need to tweak our tasks and impose constraints on them to convert them to optimal difficulty so we reach a state of flow. And time seems to be a very good tool to achieve this.