[hakunin]

I like to say that you can either learn to be fast at doing low quality work, or learn to be fast at doing high quality work. It’s your choice really. But the only way to learn the latter is to start by prioritizing quality over speed.

[acituan]

Funny how this exactly applies to instrument playing. Unearned speed only begets sloppiness. The only way to go past a certain velocity is to do meticulous metronome work from a perfectly manageable pace and build up with intention and synchrony. And even then it is not a linear increase, you will need to slow back down to integrate every now and then. (Stetina's "Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar"; 8 bpm up, 4 bpm down)

[fleebee]

I don't think this is true at all.

At slow, manageable tempos, you can afford to use motions that don't scale to fast tempos. If you only ever play "what you can manage" with meticulous, tiny BPM increments, you'll never have to take the leap of faith and most likely will hit a wall, never getting past like 120-130 BPM 16ths comfortably. Don't ask how I know this.

What got me past that point was short bursts at BPMs way past my comfort zone and building synchrony _after_ I stumbled upon more efficient motions that scaled. IIRC, this is what Shawn Lane advocated as well.

I recommend checking out Troy Grady's (Cracking The Code) videos on YouTube if you're interested in guitar speed picking. Troy's content has cleared up many myths with an evidence-based approach and helped me get past the invisible wall. He recently uploaded a video pertaining to this very topic[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=craA3CLqvkM

[popopo73]

Same applies for martial arts, weightlifting, motorsports, even target shooting..

[alsetmusic]

When I was in high school, a friend who played drums in a band would try to pull off these super complicated fast fills. He couldn't pull them off and I always thought, "why doesn't he play something he can get right?" Well, after months of practice, he was able to pull them off. He was a great drummer, but he worked at incredibly hard to get there. It's a little tangential to what you said, but it feels appropriately related.

I guess I'm agreeing while also saying that you can get there by failing a lot at full speed first. Maybe he practiced at half-speed when he was alone and I never saw that part.

[meander_water]

One could argue that learned speed has the hours of practice "baked in" so it's actually much slower. And that's not a bad thing IMO.

I think this post only covers one side of the coin. Sure, getting things done fast achieves the outcome, but in the long run you retain and learn less. Learning new stuff takes time and effort.

[fmbb]

I don’t thinking applies at all.

When you practice your instrument you get better att doing the exact same things the sloppy player is doing, but you do it in time and in tune.

When you get faster at building software by (ostensibly) focusing on quality you do not do the same thing as someone that focuses on quick results.

[GuinansEyebrows]

as they say: "slow is smooth; smooth is fast."

[marcosdumay]

I think Demming never put this between his famous phrases, but if Lean carries any lesson is that high-quality work tends to be faster than fast work.

[trueismywork]

Slow is steady, steady os smooth, smooth is fast

[chairmansteve]

I like to break a big task into small tasks, then do each small task fast. I don't worry about how long the big task takes. I'll get there in the end.

[nottorp]

If you do that you basically reduce cognitive load and you may end up doing it faster indeed :)

[kaizenb]

Same here.