Don’t Rush
What Shanghai Taught Me About the Hidden Cost of Speed
J.J. Chang (Ph.D.)
During a trip to Shanghai, I found myself repeatedly hearing the same phrase from our guide:
“Don’t rush.”
It appeared in situations both trivial and inconvenient. When traffic slowed to a crawl, she would tell us not to rush. When a restaurant took longer than expected to serve our meal, she would offer the same advice. Even when we became concerned about falling behind schedule and missing the next stop on our itinerary, she simply smiled and repeated those familiar words.
At the time, I paid little attention to them. They sounded like a local expression; the kind of phrase people say to ease tension and keep a group relaxed. What stayed with me, however, was the contrast between the message and its surroundings.
Shanghai is not a city associated with slowness. It is a city defined by movement. Skyscrapers rise above busy intersections, subway stations absorb and release endless streams of commuters, and entire industries seem to reinvent themselves almost overnight. Walking through Lujiazui or along Nanjing Road, one cannot help but feel the energy of a place that is constantly accelerating. The city seems to operate according to an unspoken assumption that opportunities must be seized quickly because tomorrow will arrive faster than expected.
Yet amid all this motion, I kept hearing a reminder not to rush. The contradiction intrigued me. How could one of the fastest-moving cities in the world repeatedly emphasize patience? It was not until much later that I began to appreciate what those words actually meant. “Don’t rush” was never a suggestion to slow down. Rather, it was a reminder not to allow anxiety to determine one’s pace.
That distinction may seem subtle, but it has profound implications for how we think about work, success, and even time itself.
The Assumption That Faster Is Better
Modern organizations are built around the belief that speed creates advantage. Managers are encouraged to make decisions quickly. Companies compete to shorten product development cycles. Individuals are praised for responding faster, producing more, and moving ahead of their peers. In many professional environments, speed is not simply valued; it is treated as evidence of competence.
The underlying logic appears straightforward. Markets evolve rapidly, customer expectations change constantly, and technological disruption rewards organizations that can act before their competitors do. Under these conditions, slowing down can seem dangerous. Yet the relationship between speed and success is more complicated than it first appears.
This was the central insight of a study conducted by Perlow, Okhuysen and Repenning, (2002) who spent nineteen months observing a rapidly growing internet startup. Their goal was to understand how an emphasis on speed influenced organizational decision making. What they discovered challenged one of the most common assumptions in management.
The researchers initially expected that pressure for speed would originate from the external environment. Competition, technological change, and market uncertainty would create urgency, and organizations would respond by accelerating their decisions. Instead, they found that much of the pressure came from inside the organization itself.
Success was not reducing anxiety; success was creating it.
When Success Becomes a Source of Pressure
The startup in the study grew quickly, and many of its achievements could be traced to rapid decision making. Fast hiring enabled expansion. Quick execution supported growth. The organization appeared to be doing exactly what contemporary management advice recommends. However, each success produced an unexpected side effect.
As performance improved, expectations increased.
When user numbers exceeded targets, management did not feel satisfied. Instead, they revised their goals upward. What had once seemed ambitious suddenly appeared modest. Each milestone revealed a new and more demanding destination.
At the same time, growth created additional complexity. Larger operations required more employees, more resources, and more funding. As expenses increased, the amount of time available before the next funding round decreased. The organization became increasingly dependent on maintaining its momentum. As a result, success generated a paradox. The company was growing stronger, yet its members felt more pressure than ever. The research described this dynamic as the Speed Trap.
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The trap emerges when growth raises expectations, higher expectations increase urgency, and urgency drives even faster decision making. Because each round of acceleration creates conditions that encourage further acceleration, organizations become caught in a self-reinforcing cycle from which it becomes difficult to escape.
The most striking aspect of this process is that participants often believe they are responding to external demands when, in reality, many of those demands have been created by their own previous successes. The faster they move, the more they feel compelled to move faster still.
The Psychology of Never Enough
What makes the Speed Trap so relevant today is that it extends far beyond organizations. At its core, the study is not merely about decision making. It is about how expectations shape our experience of time. Objectively speaking, time remains constant. A day still contains twenty-four hours. A week still contains seven days. Subjectively, however, time can feel very different.
As our expectations expand, the distance between our current reality and our imagined future also expands. The result is a persistent sense that there is never enough time, never enough progress, and never enough achievement.
Many of us have experienced this phenomenon personally. We complete one project only to begin worrying about the next. We reach a professional milestone only to discover that our standards have risen again. We accomplish goals that once seemed impossible, yet instead of feeling satisfied, we focus on what remains unfinished.
From the outside, progress is visible, from the inside, it often feels insufficient. This is why so many accomplished individuals continue to experience anxiety despite their achievements. Their success has not eliminated pressure; it has altered the scale of their expectations.
The finish line keeps moving, and because it keeps moving, the feeling of urgency rarely disappears.
What “Don’t Rush” Really Means
Reflecting on the Speed Trap helped me understand the conversations I had in Shanghai.
The phrase “don’t rush” was never an argument against ambition. It did not suggest that goals were unimportant or that effort should be reduced. Nor did it deny the reality of deadlines, competition, or responsibility. Instead, it represented a different relationship with urgency. The phrase acknowledged that speed can be useful without allowing speed to become the sole measure of value.
In many organizations, acceleration gradually becomes a default response to every challenge. When a problem emerges, people move faster. When expectations increase, they move faster. When uncertainty appears, they move faster still.
Yet movement and progress are not always the same thing. An organization can become highly efficient at accelerating while losing the ability to reflect. Individuals can become extremely productive while losing sight of why they began their journey in the first place. The danger is not speed itself. The danger lies in becoming unable to distinguish between situations that genuinely require urgency and those that require patience, reflection, or restraint.
The Ability to Choose Your Pace
As another academic semester comes to an end, I find myself thinking less about productivity and more about pacing.
Like many people, I spent much of the semester moving from one commitment to another. Lectures, meetings, research projects, grading, deadlines, and administrative responsibilities created a constant sense of motion. Looking back, I sometimes wonder how everything was completed. Yet what stands out most is not how much was accomplished. It is the realization that moving faster was rarely the real challenge. The greater challenge was maintaining perspective.
Some aspects of life benefit from urgency. Opportunities occasionally require swift action. Decisions sometimes need to be made quickly. However, many of the things that matter most operate according to a different rhythm. Relationships deepen gradually through trust and shared experiences. Learning develops through repetition, reflection, and practice. Culture emerges over time through countless interactions that cannot be hurried. Meaningful personal growth often unfolds so slowly that it becomes visible only in retrospect.
Attempting to accelerate these processes indefinitely may increase activity, but it rarely improves their quality.Perhaps that is the deeper lesson hidden within those three simple words I heard so often in Shanghai.
“Don’t rush” is not advice about moving slowly. It is advice about remaining intentional.
It is a reminder that ambition and anxiety are not the same thing, that speed should remain a tool rather become an identity, and that true progress requires more than constant acceleration.
True composure is found in a fast-moving world where you still know why you started, where you are going, and which pace is truly your own.
Reference
Perlow, L. A., Okhuysen, G. A., & Repenning, N. P. (2002). The Speed Trap: Exploring the Relationship Between Decision Making and Temporal Context. Academy of Management Journal, 45(5), 931–955.
J. J. Chang is a researcher and university professor studying organizational processes, cultural industries, and strategic resourcefulness. Writing about how ideas become actionable — or disappear — inside organizations.
