Rarely when I rush through work I am happy with what I create. Sure, sometimes if you are doing something you’ve done hundreds of times before, you can rush through it without consequences, but by large, once you rush you create mush.

If it is worth doing, it is worth doing well saying is right on money.

So why do we rush? I found myself sometimes rushing through a task just to get it done. I start looking beyond the task I am working on and just want to finish it to move to the next thing. It is usually recipe for disaster. How do you stop that? You stop it by simply recognizing that you are rushing it. Once you are aware of it, you can focus on what you are doing and keep reminding yourself to do it right. Because, cleaning up the mush is even less fun…

More often though, we rush because we are under tight deadline. Now, I love deadlines. I’d put deadlines on every-single thing if I could just because having a deadline increases greatly the probability that task will actually be completed. Rarely having no deadline resulted in exceptional results. Pressure creates diamonds you know 🙂

But, negative side-effect of deadlines is the rush. You rush to meet the deadline and start cutting corners. Best way to combat that is to either scale down what needs to be done, so it can be done right within time you have or, wait for it, just blow through the deadline to do it right.

Seriously. Rarely deadlines are that time sensitive that they can’t be moved. If life itself is not on balance deadline can be moved. But don’t just drop the ball. Explain why moving deadline will result in better outcome. Also, don’t take this as excuse to do it all the time perpetually. That’s another road that leads to the town called nowhere…

Another bad thing about rush is that work that is rushed rarely is satisfying and fulfilling as work to which you gave your best. And I think this is the most important point here. You have to enjoy the journey, the work that you do. You enjoy it by giving it your best, not by rushing it. The satisfaction of getting something done is short lived. If you have not enjoyed the act of doing you’ve lost something big.

So if you feel that rush this week to just finish something take that as sign that you should do it right instead.