The Habit of Speed

My greatest challenge.

One way to impress people while tap dancing is to execute a series of movements that is faster than expected, goes longer than expected, and is surprising in its composition. These sequences can come up in improvisational settings, but there is a secret to being able to get them out: exceptional familiarity. The training required for such sequences to come up spontaneously in performance breads familiarity with specific movements AND how they work together with other movements and in different contexts. The familiarity that is gained has such depth that even if a series of movements is a few degrees removed from the practiced content, it feels familiar. Particular familiarity breads general familiarity.

This is a very good thing.

We do this all the time with language. Those who have to write or speak a lot, maybe more so than others. Our familiarity with language allows us to not have to “think” about the right word. But we also fall into patterns. I remember an exchange I had with a customer service representative at the airline check-in counter. Upon completing my check-in they said, “Have a nice flight.” To which I responded, “You, too.” I was flying. They weren’t. My words were faster than my thinking.

The habit of speed.

With this kind of training one outcome is a high speed of choice making. It is faster than “normal” and faster than needed in many other aspects of life – especially in the formation of person. Think race-car-driver-like reflexes applied to making eggs. It’s overkill and can be harmful – potentially breading miscommunication, impatience, frustration, and contempt.

This is not so good.

One other insight around this idea of speed came to me from Buster Brown. An elder and master in the world of tap dance, Buster once told me, “I like to dance fast because I can get away with more.” There seems to be an advantage to speed. Buster was talking about getting away with a missed sound here or there, or maybe a tiny loss of balance. Dance fast and you don’t have to be as accurate as someone who is dancing more slowly. The speed of everything happening will hide any missteps from most observers. Get to the end of the routine and you’ve made it. You’ll get a round of applause for just having gotten through the torrent of movements and sounds without falling or getting hurt.

What happens when this idea is taken out of tap dancing and applied to life?

Live fast and we may not have to confront many things that others living more slowly would have to confront. That is until we are confronted with reality. I like the idea of reality as being the way things really are, especially as opposed to the way we think they should be. Here it’s okay, almost necessary, to spend some time thinking of the differences between accepting reality (begrudgingly), liking reality (with joy), and trusting reality (with love). There’s quite a bit there to parse out and much more than this week’s focus will allow. What is important to articulate here is that a single way – like making choices quickly – is not always the best way to deal with a reality at hand. Just as a hammer is not always the best tool for every job.

However, humans are formative beings. We like habit. We almost need it to live well. Habits in turn are formative. They compound upon themselves to give us ideas of the kinds of people that we are. You could say that I am the kind of person that thinks fast. But that’s not necessarily true. Thinking fast is just a habit I’ve cultivated. One I may have been predisposed to, but one that was cultivated nonetheless. Frankly, I’d much rather be thinking and moving slowly. But that’s a story for another time. So, we have a combination of things that form habits in us and we are in turn formed in part by our habits.

What happens when we find the habits that are in us to be harmful, destructive, or plain evil?

In my journey out of burnout the key habit I have had to learn to interrupt is the habit of speed. I trained for fast choice making. It was part of my performative skill set – a way of showing everyone that I knew what I was doing and was good at what I was doing. One of the ways it showed up was like this: In the midst of playing a song, a musician would play a few notes, and within seconds I could translate those notes into a tap dance step – one that a non-musician would recognize as an echo of what had just been played – and execute the step. The speed at which I had to make choices regarding context (the song, fellow players, and dance floor, for instance) and content (the rhythms, tones, and movements for example) was intense…imposing…almost oppressive. It required speed of listening, thinking, and acting. The speed of listening and thinking was backed by a commitment to act. I made the choice and acted with my full being almost immediately. I was always at the ready. I was continually responding to input. If I was slow to act, the entire flow of the experience for the band and the audience would be interrupted.

This habit of speed, when translated to other areas of human experience, turned out to be a double-edged sword. It did well where vision casting was concerned. I would effectively embody a future that wasn’t present yet, and could speak as if it was real. I could act quickly to begin to make that future a reality. I could see the path and move in its direction. However, this same skill set turned out to be horrible in other areas of life, especially where other people were concerned. Namely where other people could not yet see the future that was in my own mind (and body), and would feel as if they were being dragged towards it forcibly as I acted quickly to bring it about.

Just the speed of action would cause anxiety, tension, defensiveness, and resistance. Now, I’ve found this to be true between me and others and between me and myself. If my mind had a future vision that my body wasn’t ready for (or interestingly, vice versa), for example, I would have experiences anxiety, tension, defensiveness, and resistance within myself.

With all this in play, after hitting my wall, I had to find a way to live differently. The other option I could see was to live a life in which hitting walls (read: extreme burnout) would simply be a fact of life. I didn’t think life had to be that way. I knew I needed to define my limits – what would be enough – notably without feeling like I was lowering my standard of achievement. However, upon attempting to make changes my habit of speed became very apparent.

Part of the formation in me that lead me to hit my wall was speed, plain and simple. In order to change my individual formation, I could not do it from a standpoint of thinking I knew how to change. That was an important realization for me. I thought I knew a thing or two about training, after all. Not this time. Not just the choices I made, but the way I made choices on a day to day basis had to change. My focus and my pacing had to change in order to provide the opportunity for my thinking to change. What I paid attention to and how fast I was thinking and moving had to shift. Only then could the thought patterns that I had cultivated over the years begin to be interrupted. I could see them more clearly, judge them more rightly, and make changes as necessary.

This is an ongoing process and even as I write this I’m realizing the pace I’ve been moving this past week. It’s a little faster than I would like. I’m late on a few projects – not past deadline, but not where I had hoped to be. I have had a full week of work – meetings, production, and teaching. I can feel my mind wanting to kick back into “fast” mode. It’s a very tangible shift now. I know speed is not inherently evil, but given my most recent experience with burnout, I want to resist the urge to just jump back into the whirlwind of it all.

I don’t want to hit another wall.

Here’s the thing: In order to be the kind of tap dancer that I’ve enjoyed being I have to think and act quickly. In order to work in some of the industries I’ve been connected with, I have to produce quickly. In order to relate with certain people, I have to be quick. If speed isn’t inherently evil, I guess I now have to decide when it is good for me to be quick, and when it isn’t.

The choice is real and not always clear.

I am a work in progress. I haven’t always gotten it right. Sometimes I jump to a conclusion when I should have waited. Sometimes I wait to think about something that I need to just make a choice and move on. There are tools to be shared here for sure, but more important to know is this idea: The one way we have been formed to do things may not be the good way in every situation. To change, we must give ourselves permission to slow down, re-think, and interrupt our own habits. To see them and kindly judge them (without condemnation – they are what they are). As we take inventory, we can make choices as to what we would like to change. The actual process of change is a whole world unto itself, and we can cross that bridge when we get to it. When we do, we’ll have the opportunity to grow in ways that we may never have thought possible.