Slowing down to speed up

We’re surrounded by tools that help us consume faster.

AI can summarise books, extract talking points from a 90-minute video, and reduce research into three bullet points. Podcasts play at 2x speed. Newsletters condense thinking into atomic takes. It's all frictionless.

But here’s the tension: the faster I consume, the less I seem to retain. And more importantly, the less I truly understand.

That hit me recently—twice, actually. Once while walking to the shops, and again in the bath. In both cases, I wasn’t trying to be productive. I wasn’t reading or listening or summarising. I was just… letting my mind wander. And that’s exactly when two of my most meaningful product breakthroughs in the past few months arrived.

System 1 vs System 2

Daniel Kahneman talks about this in Thinking, Fast and Slow—how our brains operate in two modes:

• System 1: fast, automatic, instinctive
  
  

• System 2: slow, effortful, deliberate
  
  

Most of our day-to-day operates in System 1. It’s efficient. It’s powerful. But it’s also shallow. It grabs patterns, skims surfaces, and moves quickly from signal to response.

But the deeper, more strategic thinking? That lives in System 2. The part that connects seemingly unrelated ideas. That questions assumptions. That lets ambiguity sit for a bit before resolving it.

What I’ve realised is this: when we consume on autopilot—scrolling, skimming, summarising—we’re feeding System 1. But when we create space to process, reflect, and pause, we unlock System 2. And that’s where the breakthroughs happen.

Depth Is a Strategic Advantage

As a product leader, I’m not trying to stay ahead by reading more than everyone else. I’m trying to see differently. That’s not about volume—it’s about discernment.

Yes, I use AI to help filter the noise. But then I slow down. I give the important stuff room to breathe. I talk it through with people I trust. I look for edge cases. I ask myself how it applies to the messy reality of teams, users, constraints.

Speed is seductive. But depth compounds.

So now I treat quiet time—walks, baths, even spacing out—as strategic inputs. Not downtime. Because that’s often when System 2 finally gets a chance to do its work.

The Bottom Line

Fast consumption has a place. It helps us scan, triage, and prioritise. But if we want meaningful insight—whether in product, leadership, or life—we need to leave room for slow thinking. For unstructured moments. For silence.

Breakthroughs rarely arrive on demand. But they often show up when we’ve given them space.

So here’s what I’m trying:
Consume less. Think more. Slow down—on purpose.

That’s where the real product edge lives.