If you are stranded on a desert island with a small community of people, there is no place for a stop-watch.
In these pro-survival situations, the non-compete clause comes out. We don’t need to “race” in our work or our “fitness” with a clock.
There’s no upside to additional strain, it is better to connect and work together.
So what about in a broader culture?
Well, the broader culture really is just a million sub-cultures. One of those sub-cultures might be to “win the race” on the day, but there are 999,000 other options to choose from where you can simply opt out of this completely.
Instead of getting busier doing more, faster, we can slow things down, learn more about who we really are and what we want to create, humanise the situation and do things better.
This allows space for connection, deeper understanding and innovation (which needs space).
This applies to your training/movement practice, learning skills, idea generation, a lot of business, writing and more.
When Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Ev Williams and Noah Glass came up with the bare bones of Twitter, it was during a two week “hackathon” at the company – they were instructed to let go of any targets or tasks, connect with another person in the group, brainstorm, and simply create.
Twitter now has a market cap of 26.3B. All from two weeks with no stop watch.