Over the past few decades, it seems like we’ve grown accustomed to extremely slow way of doing things. A college degree used to take 4 years 50 years ago, and it still (normally) takes 4 years today. Unlike mental endeavours which seem to have stayed stagnant, physical projects seem to have regressed quite a bit. The empire state building was constructed in 3 years. I know there are roads in my hometown which took longer to be constructed today.

There might be a plethora of reasons for this slowness, but we must remember that human life is finite (yet). So, this slowness is a symptom of some deeper issue that needs to be fixed. If you go slow, you can only get so much done. If a typical work project takes 4 years, you will only ever be part of 10 such projects over a 40 year career. If you’re happy with the normal pace of things, you might be doing yourself a disservice.

As a silver lining, there’s always small teams which are moving incredibly fast. Look at these teams for inspiration. I’ll leave figuring out which teams you find inspiring right now as a personal exercise.