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The “moral lesson” from the story of the Tortoise and the Hare is honestly one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

How?

Apart from that ONE folktale, one that is already very unrealistic, by the way, when has going slow ever won anyone a race before?

Even in said story, the tortoise did not prove that being slow is better than being fast or a foolproof strategy to success.

He only proved that you can still win a race if your faster competitor is foolish enough to stop running and to take a nap simply because he could see the finish line in sight.

And that’s not even a very profound lesson because how many times in life does that happen?

How many times in business, academics, or any other competitive endeavour, does/do your opponent/opponents prefer to sleep than to win simply because you’re far behind them?
I’ll tell you… NEVER.

It never, ever happens, and for no other reason apart from the fact that to do so is simply foolish, yet this story has been peddled from generation to generation in an attempt to teach children “patience”.

But was the tortoise in that story really patient, or was he moving as slowly as he was because that was literally all he could do?

Even if he was moving patiently, is that why he won the race in the end?

It just makes no sense.

And the most annoying part is that the real lesson of the story is there in plain sight for all to see, but, for some reason, it was and it’s still never paid any attention to.

The hare in that story did not lose the race because he was fast, he lost because he was arrogant, became distracted, and because, for some reason, he just stopped running.

If the hare had remained focused and continued running at the same speed he had started with, then that poorly constructed motivational quote would not even exist today.

Even if he decided to slow down and start to walk, he would still have won a landslide victory.

The tortoise would have been far behind him, trudging slowly toward the finish line while the hare would have already been at home, resting.

Being “fast” was not the problem of the hare; his problem was that he stopped being “steady”, and yet, all the attention and criticism is always placed on his speed.

I wonder why.

What exactly is the tactical advantage of being “slow and steady” in a race? Why can’t you be fast and steady?

Like I said, the actual moral lesson of this story is simple:

Never celebrate too early.

Or if you want to sound a bit more philosophical:

Don’t become so confident in your advantage that you stop using it, or become so arrogant in your results that you lose sight of your end game.

This, I believe, is a much more useful and valuable lesson than the unreasonable patience that story is trying to encourage because, if you really think about it, there’s nothing about slowness, or patience, that automatically translates to wisdom.

What’s wise about being slow in a race?

You can be slow and steady in the wrong direction for years, and when you finally arrive, you’ll discover that the race had already ended three years ago.

So, you took all your time and all that patience just to achieve nothing.

Isn’t that pitiful?

At least if you had been fast and steady, you would have discovered that you were on the wrong path and you would have realigned yourself earlier.
I’ll repeat: Speed is not always the problem.

If you isolate the phrase of our focus from the children’s story and examine it properly, you’ll see just how strange it is.

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

What kind of “race” is it even? How slow are we talking about here? How “steady” is steady? Who exactly is your opponent? For how long will this “patient” tactic be employed?

Yes, maybe it’s not that deep, but this is exactly how mindsets and narratives get passed down for years with people just internalising them without thinking about it.

We don’t ask what happens if the other person in the race is also steady but much faster than you? Or what happens if losing the race means that you literally die? Or what happens if the person you’re competing against doesn’t wait for you to catch up?

Unlike that story, life is not always so kind to everyone who falls behind in whatever endeavour they’re engaged in.
Just ask BlackBerry and Nokia what happened to their dominance in the smartphone industry.

Sometimes there is only one position or one contract or one scholarship or one publishing deal or one job or one investor or one audience or one opening or one chance, and only one person will be able to get it.

Once they do, the race ends, and everybody else goes home empty-handed.

You can have an impressive speech about how beautiful your journey was and how steadily you slowly took your time to get to the finish line, but the opportunity doesn’t care.

It won’t even be there to listen to you because it would have already been taken by the person who was much faster than you.

And people might “aww” and “wow” at your touching story of perseverance and endurance, but, at the end of the day, stories without results remain just that. Stories.

I understand that in certain things, like investing, for example, being successful requires patient compounding, but in many other things in life, there’s nothing inherently virtuous or profitable about being slow or taking longer time just for the sake of it.

A lot of people romanticise the struggle of the time and effort that it took them to become or achieve certain things, but if it took you three years to learn what I can learnt in three months, you’re not automatically “better” because it took you longer.

In fact, you can even make a point about the reverse being the case.

Yes, there’s the place of experience, but who said that experience MUST always be synonymous with longer time spent?

Those two things are not mutually exclusive; the same way being old does not automatically connote being wise.

I can gain more knowledge about a concept in one week than someone else did about the same thing in one year.

Who is more experienced in fighting wars: A young soldier who has spent 2 years on the battlefield or an old general who has spent his entire 20-year career behind a desk?

The answer is obvious to me.

If I can test an idea, discover that it doesn’t work, adjust and try again while you spend that exact time doing nothing but planning your perfect launch, I haven’t been reckless simply because I moved faster.

If we’re going to give a lesson on the importance of patience, then we must not forget to mention a more vital facet, which is direction.

At the end of the day, whether you’re patiently jogging or aggressively sprinting, or whether you’re taking one month or ten years, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, the result will still be the same in the end.
Failure.

Direction without speed CAN be useless, but speed without direction is DEFINITELY useless, and I’ll be digressing from the central point to explain why.

Imagine two people are trying to reach the same destination, and one runs in the wrong direction while the other walks very slowly in the right direction.

You will agree with me that if you absolutely HAD to choose to be one of those two, you would prefer to be the latter than the former. Right?

But imagine a third person joins the race and starts running really fast in the right direction. Who do you think will end up winning the race?

The third runner, right?

Exactly, and that is exactly who you and I must strive to be.

People make it seem like the price to pay for precision is speed, but who says we always have to choose?
Your goal should always be to be fast and precise.

Figure out where you’re going, understand how to get there, and then move as fast as possible without looking back for once.

Move quickly to take advantage of opportunities, as you move carefully not to make mistakes, and you move decisively so that fear doesn’t make you sacrifice your ambition.

I repeat, you do not have to sacrifice SPEED for PRECISION every single time. You don’t.

You can’t even afford to live life with this mindset of “slow and steady always wins”, especially if you’re aspiring for any form of greatness or impact that transcends yourself.

If you’re doing your own thing by yourself, on your own timeline, with nobody depending on you and nobody competing with you, then maybe you can have a good life by always taking your time, waiting till you’ve planned to the details, and building patiently.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that.

However, if you’re in a fast-moving industry where hundreds of people are competing for the same opportunities, you’ll quickly understand why the philosophy of that tortoise can’t get you anywhere.

As you’re being “patient”, many other people are learning, launching, testing, publishing, networking, trying everything and anything, and taking all the opportunities that you are still biding your time to take.

While you’re telling yourself that “everything happens at the right time”, somebody else is making sure that their time happens as soon as they want it.

“Life is not a competition” yes, but many things in life are, and you cannot always respond to a competitive environment with a mindset that’s akin to taking a leisurely stroll.
Sometimes, environment demands urgency, making hesitation become expensive because windows close all the time, humans evolve, markets move, and desires shift.

Imagine trying to launch a new smartphone brand in 2026; there’s just not much point to it now, is there?

And even if you are to find a market edge, if you don’t act fast to exploit it before it disappears, you’ll lose the opportunity forever.

Let’s say a company has been slowly working on “touchscreen technology” for 20 years and they launch their first phone today, will anybody pay them any attention?

The importance of speed cannot be downplayed in life, especially when it’s backed by accurate precision.

Industries like technology, business, media, entertainment, sports, or anywhere else competition is intense are rife with examples that prove that the people who succeed aren’t necessarily the ones who move “slowly” and “steadily”.

They are usually the people who can move quickly without becoming careless or relenting along the way.

Or the people who don’t even wait to be “steady” before they move; they just dart out in the direction they desire and figure out their balance on the way.

There is a huge difference between:
“I need to slow down because I’m moving in the wrong direction.”
and
“I need to slow down because good things always take time.”

The first one is wisdom, and the second is just an outright lie.

One thing humans will always do is to find people, quotes, and examples that they can use as “copium” to appease their consciences in certain situations.

Most of the time you’ll hear someone talking about “slow and steady”, and you’ll see that it’s not even about patience.

Many times they are just scared or afraid of failing or afraid of looking stupid or, probably the most common, afraid of starting badly and looking clueless.

So they tell themselves things like, “I’m taking my time”, “I’m building gradually”, or “I believe in slow growth”.

Are they saying the truth? Maybe.

Or maybe they’re just making excuses to avoid all the fears, doubts, and uncertainties that come with moving forward.

I find it quite unfortunate that there are people who have spent years preparing for a life they could have started living many years ago simply because they keep hesitating and refuse to just move.

Meanwhile, somebody less talented or even less “deserving” than them is living the life that they desire because he or she was more willing to act.

It honestly doesn’t matter how much you want something; you can and probably will always be overtaken by someone who is moving toward your goal with more intentionality than you are.

I know a few people who finished writing their books in much lesser time than it took me to because while I was planning out the details and procrastinating, they were just simply writing.

You can be more intelligent, more educated, more talented, more experienced, and you can even have the better idea, but if someone is consistently taking action while you’re consistently preparing to take action, eventually the gap between you and that person will become very clear.

And many times that gap becomes impossible to close because, unlike in that story, people won’t always sit back and wait for you to catch up with them.

I’m not wholly interested in living a “fast” life, but nothing about a “slow” life appeals to me either.

What I would rather do is to trust the process and follow whatever it requires in every moment.

If it requires patience or endurance, as many things often will because things will often have a natural process that cannot be bullied or rushed, then that is the kind of waiting I can respect.

The kind where my hands remain busy and every day is actually taking me somewhere.

What I won’t subscribe to is waiting without action in the name of “patience”, or moving at a slow pace just for the sake of it, when I could be moving much faster.

Doing that is just simply letting time pass by, and time will always pass whether we’re doing anything with it or not.

Why waste it?

So, to conclude, no, I don’t believe slow and steady will win you any races in life.

At least, it won’t win you most races in life.

Sometimes slow and steady will win; many other times fast and steady will win.

The hare’s mistake was not that he was fast; his problem was that he stopped focusing on this objective, and he lost the race because of it.

Now he has become a subject or mockery for God knows how many centuries.

Meanwhile, the tortoise gets praised for doing literally nothing.

Too bad.

For the sake of balance, we should all just know our destination, understand the terrain of getting there, and move accordingly to it.
And if we can get to our desired destination fast without losing precision, then why on Earth should we choose to arrive slowly?

"slow and steady" won't win you any races in life.

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