Maybe the default settings are too high

My dad was a busy construction contractor. One summer he tore himself away from work and took the family to a week long boat camp out next to a big beautiful lake. It turned out that our campsite was actually in the lake by a few inches at high water, but dad saw a way to dam it off and keep it dry, so he grabs the shovel and starts digging trenches and building walls and ordering us around.

About an hour into that, pouring sweat, he stops cold and says "what the hell am I doing?" The flooded camp was actually nice on a hot day and all we really had to do was move a couple of tents. He dropped the shovel and spent the rest of the week sunbathing, fishing, snorkeling and water skiing as God intended. He flipped a switch and went from Hyde to Jekyll on vacation. I've had to emulate that a few times.

This can work with the way you think as well.

Many years ago, I had a technical manager who never felt any pressure to be the first to come up with the answer to a question or the solution to some problem. If I was having a technical conversation with him, and we arrived at a particularly subtle or complex issue, he could go completely silent, just staring straight ahead with his fingers to his lips. I would find it very uncomfortable, and I would start blurting out half-baked ideas to fill the silence, but he would either raise his finger or (usually) just ignore me. This could go on for 30-60 seconds, at which point he might shrug and say "I don't know" or, more likely, have a pretty well formed idea of how to move ahead.

I used to joke to my co-workers that during those silent interludes, he was swapping in the solution from a remote disk.

This manager also typed with one or two fingers, and pretty slowly too. But he wrote a lot of good code.

I find walking can be a similar experience. It really crystalized for me this summer while walking the Camino de Santiago because of the effect of exploring another country. When you walk, you see everything. The world is huge. Everything is slower, higher fidelity, and for me, richer. You can spend an entire day walking from one town to another. Think of everything you will see! Compare this to driving. Driving is like compression. You could drive between the same two towns in less than an hour. You may see many beautiful things while driving, but the experience is fleeting and momentary. You will miss so many details along the way.

As always, there are tradeoffs, and you can't walk everywhere or always have these types of mindful experiences. On the other hand, life is short and perhaps paradoxically, slower experiences can yield richer days.

> When you slow down your eating speed, say to half or a third your default speed, you get much more enjoyment out of a smaller amount of food. The extra attention given to each bite allows more of the “good stuff,” whatever that is exactly, to reach you.

I wonder if this contributes to a good chunk of the experience of fine dining. When you get served expensive food in micro-portions that are accompanied by long explanations, you don't gobble it down but take as much time as possible to savour it.

Quote that I always like:

There was a man who was afraid of his shadow and disliked his footprints. So he tried to get away from them. He ran, but the faster he ran, the more numerous his footprints became, and his shadow kept up with him without lagging behind. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster, until he collapsed and died of exhaustion. He did not realize that if he had simply stayed in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared, and if he had sat still, there would have been no footprints.

And another one [0]:

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest; Every year the green ivy grows longer. No news of the affairs of men, Only the occasional song of a woodcutter. The sun shines and I mend my robe; When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems. I have nothing to report, my friends. If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.

[0] https://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2011/06/stop-chasing...

If you’re a fan of LOTR but don’t fancy reading it aloud yourself, I’d really recommend the new audio versions read by Andy Serkis. While I don’t vibe with every facet of his performance, overall it’s a tour-de-force, and really makes the prose come to life. Especially in those descriptive sections that it’s possible to glaze over when reading the text. Having an actor of the calibre of Serkis reading them to you brings out the poetry and beauty of Tolkien’s language.

Music is an interesting case. You can't slow down the consumption of music (you have to let it play at the speed the performer intended), but you can dial up the attention you give it. Listening with headphones, eyes closed, and phone+doorbell etc. switched off would be close to max. Sitting at a live concert (I am thinking classical) is up there too, because you've given yourself permission to not think of/work on anything else in that time. For music, we can say that the default settings are too LOW.

And similar to the point OP made, you get more out of it when you attend more closely. And similarly, most music does not withstand this level of scrutiny.

This us why I consider sailing to be the best way of travelling the world: You're slow to begin with and the wind dictates your plans. You really don't want to be motoring. Instead you have time to experience the land, the people and the ocean. Preferably without being online constantly.

This is one of the things I actually remember my mother saying. Festina lente [0]: Make haste slowly. I've always tried to stick to it because when I have I've found more to appreciate in whatever I'm doing (as TFA says)

Sadly, for some reason I now can't read slowly, which pisses me off. I and my partner read aloud together alternating chapters of a chosen book, and I love how get _much_ more out of the book than I would reading alone in a tenth of the time.

I've also found that some books seem written to be read aloud: the sentence structure and punctuation lends itself to easy reading aloud, whereas some books have really convoluted sentences with multiple parenthetical sub-clauses that are a real challenge to read aloud in an a way that's easy to follow. I've ended up so that normally try to write in a way that's easy to read aloud. I think if something's easy to read aloud it's going to be easy to comprehend when read normally. And Yes, I know that the sentence at the beginning of the paragraph probably doesn't match that.

0: (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/festina%20lente)

I suffered a burnout fall last year and adapting to a slower lifestyle was my way out of it. I started reading long novels, and taking aimless, leisurely walks. It's hard to overstate the positive effect that had on my mind and well-being. I haven't felt this kind of mental clarity and motivation to do things for over a decade.

This post resonates strongly with me. I strongly believe the default settings _are_ too high, and it takes conscious effort to slow down while bound to the shackles of modern society, but it's so worth it.

I can't control the speed that I read.

In fact, I noticed that whenever a book becomes most exciting, I start reading especially fast (to the point of skipping words), because I want to know what happens next. So I spend the least time with the best parts of the best books.

Ever since I realized that, I have switched pretty much exclusively to audiobooks. I don't really know if it's faster or slower overall, but it's a predetermined pace, and that works better for me.

I really enjoy this train of thought. It rings true to me, its also something Hank Green was recently talking about with the negative effects of the internet. Its not that the internet is bad. We're starved for information and meaning and were being feed a diet of ultraprocessed food in the form of shorts and tiktoks. I think the solution this author laid out is good. Consume quality, with care.

We read LOTR to our sons when they were little. It was likely the 6th time for me,and 3rd in English. Stupendous experience. The command of the English Tolkien had is sublime. Wish the movies didn't take so much liberty with Faramir.!!!

I had, by chance, taken the same approach when reading the Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance years ago.

The title failed to inspire but I heard it was worth the read and stepped through line by line.

It hit with a depth that I know with complete certainty I would not have gotten if I worked through at my usual pace or took it in as an audiobook.

Nassim Taleb’s books are also favorite slow reads of mine.

All this said, I collect books faster than I can read them so there’s always a feeling somewhere that I should be pushing through a little faster.

Ah well, in the end I think that really comprehending a handful of quality books is about as good as a shallow comprehension of many more.

If you are bilingual, with one language being stronger than the other one; try reading something in the language you are least comfortable with. I do this (e.g. reading LoTR in Dutch) and it forces me to pay closer attention to each sentence.

There are words you don't know or know how to use them properly. It will help you learn the second language better, while also helping you to not gloss over whole passages.

When I use Claude Code and Codex for development, I've had some similar experiences. Claude Code always completes tasks very quickly, but leaves behind a mess that makes me anxious. Codex, on the other hand, is always slow—it slowly reads through the entire project's code, then makes changes very cautiously, testing and verifying after every small modification, and even calls codex review --uncommitted once more before committing.

At first, I found writing code with Claude Code to be enjoyable, while Codex seemed boring. But over time, I've discovered that I actually prefer Codex. Perhaps slowing down really is the key to writing high-quality code.

One of the pleasures of reading literature is noticing how compressed they are.

This is true for Tolkien, Turgenev, Hemingway or Pound. The amount of information per page—per word!—is incredibly high, which permits the conveyance of ideas which simply do not land when spoken more plainly.

You don’t need to go to high literature to find this density, by the way. Political speeches from Republican Rome and America’s Founders have a similar aspect to them.

> I’ve found reading aloud helpful for staying engaged — limiting myself to mouth-speed rather than eye-speed means I won’t rush, miss important details, and then lose interest, which has always been a problem for me.

This worked for me... for a time. And then what happened surprised me (but maybe shouldn't have): I started zoning out and thinking about other things, missing important details, while reading aloud. Wild that we can even do that.

After I finished reviewing the CS textbook "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" in the mid 1990s during a vacation (looking for errors before publication), I found that my brain had been permanently reconfigured for speed reading. For years afterwards, I would automatically read entire sentences at a time, to go as fast as possible. I think I have now recovered sufficiently so that I can read books one word at a time.

I'd argue that the issue isn't that the default is too high, but that we assume the default. Think a math class: Often enough, kids are left behind, because the pace is too high, but others get bored to tears, because for them, that very same pace is far too slow. It can even vary by unit: Maybe someone is fine at standard speed in most of AP physics, and just one unit is just completely off. It's a typical problem when engaging with varied audiences: If you have to give a talk to , say, an all hands of a tech company, getting the pacing and the information density right for everyone is just not going to happen.

So the main learning is to be aware of the speed settings, and then consider putting ourselves in situations where we can alter them. Faster or slower isn't better in a vacuum. Expermiment and find what's right for you, or, in communication, for your audience.

I think this is reading using System 2 instead of System 1. And as System 2 is much more detail oriented, it makes sense that you would notice a lot more.

    It might sound like I’m just offering clichés – less is more, stop and smell the roses, take your time – and I guess I am. But clichés suffer the same issue: they are often profound insights, consumed and passed on too rapidly for their real meaning to register anymore. You really should stop and smell roses, as you know if you’re in the habit of doing that.

Great quote

When learning to play a musical instrument and practicing a new song, some common advice is to play it as slowly as you can stand, to learn the motions well.

The base material needs to be of a minimum quality for that experience to be enjoyable, I presume. I totally see the value of that, which is one of the reasons to sometimes reduce playback speed below what my default would be. Writings from Tolkien are maybe some of the best suited for that, but I'm not 100% convinced it would work for what I'm reading currently, so I might just try it anyway - the Foundation series from Asimov.

It’s impossible to know if the content itself is worth the extra time and effort. Opportunity Cost is especially high in fiction. I agree that LotR should be on that list though.

Great article. Living and enjoying life is a skill that needs conscious practice and intentionality.

The title would make more sense as the default settings being "too low" since Low is the setting where when we trade off fidelity for speed, but "too high" has a nice ring to it.

Does Dostoyevsky really need the slow treatment? Some parts of crime and punishment merited rereading but, at least in English translation, I didn't find much in the style to savor. Really it was more thematically interesting and suspenseful.

Being able to truly tap into boredom is a superpower

This is why I re-read books. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings probably like 10 times. When I already know what’s going to happen it’s easier for me to slow down and appreciate the scenery along the way. Even later readings might reveal choices the author made; I can start to see how the story was constructed.

I find this approach rewarding across most forms of media. There plenty of movies and music I’ve revisited over and over again.

This was the same epiphany I had in college when I learned how to actually study. Previously I would try to go fast and cram as much as possible into my head and hope my decent memory could save me. That only got me so far. I eventually realized that slowing down to fully comprehend what I was learning before allowing myself to move on yielded much better results and saved a lot more time in the long run. And as a result my grades shot up.

LotR is a product of a slower era. I wonder how a modern/recent example would compare

What were you expecting, when all al the system forced you to buy more, consume fast and die hard ?

The author just scratches the surface.

Stories don’t exist on paper or even on screen. They exist in the space in between words in your mind.

I'm sympathetic to the general point, but with food, you can always just eat more! Best of both worlds!

tldr; I found something similar when I forced myself to slow down on "The Wheel of Time" series recently.

I've been reading the Wheel of Time (started by Robert Jordan, ended by Brandon Sanderson). I'm on book 11 currently. I've found something similar in that the Jordan's later books in the WOT are basically just incredible slogs if you read for completion (which, I myself did around 20 years ago at around book 10, where I stopped). Around book 6 or so I purposely slowed down and started really imagine the scenes in my minds eye. I also keep the map open on my phone and just kind of keep note of where they are at different points in the series.

Obvious, but it is really striking how much better his books are when you try to "live in the moment" of your imagination as you read, rather than reading to move the plot and action forward. I was kind of confused with myself when I reflected on it. That I somehow thought it made more sense to skim through an entire series and take reduced pleasure from something, when I could just take 50% longer and actually enjoy it.

Made me wonder about where else I am doing this in my life.

I still thinks these books are radically overpadded. He was clearly in love with his characters and his setting. He needed the guidance of a strong armed editor imho. With all that said, if you are going to commit to reading a massive series like this, you might as well appreciate it in the moment, you are going to be here a while.

What worked for us professionally, voraciously taking in information, might be less effective going forward. Being more judicious in consuming fewer, high-quality sources of content is likely to work better in the age of AI slop.

Seriously, we're just posting self-help grifters now?

I see that some others have suggested getting an Audio book version for you to listen to at your pleasure.

I came here to say "I hope that you are recording yourself so that you create your OWN audiobook"

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