When you do things quickly, something magical happens: the activation energy of doing new things shrinks. The pressure of the task at hand disappears, it becomes less daunting, and you’ll be inclined to do more.

The days I manage to do the most study, or read or write the most, are when I wake up and immediately start working without thinking – taking the cold plunge. After a few minutes, the work feels natural. If I leave the task undone for too long, a certain weight builds up, a sort of ever-increasing resistance to start, until the task seems unsurmountable.

What’s worse, is if you do something slowly, you might get an ever-increasing pile of things to finish. You start adding things to the to-do list that never get crossed off. After a while, you begin to lose faith in yourself that you can do any task at all.

This doesn’t mean to be careless. But it does mean to work faster than you think is healthy, to push your standards to a higher level. If the task carries less activation energy in your mind, then you’ll do more, and then you’ll finally get good at it.

Eventually, you will be faster and better than you thought possible.