Haste Makes Waste
Updated 2026-08-22
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The saying holds that excessive pursuit of speed defeats the goal, and that greed for small short-term gains prevents large achievements. The core proposition is that shortcuts taken for speed accumulate as debt, and the cost of the resulting rework exceeds the time the shortcuts saved. The key qualification is that the trade-off is not a general argument for slowness: the point is to price the debt correctly, so speed is worth taking only when the rework it creates stays cheaper than the delay it avoids.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Debt pricing: estimate the rework cost of the shortcut before accepting it for speed. - Quality floor: define the minimum standard that no deadline is allowed to breach. - Buffer setting: reserve time for correction rather than planning as if nothing will go wrong.
Anchor fast decisions
Work done quickly contains defects that surface later, and defects found late cost more to fix because more has been built on top of them. The rework therefore grows faster than the schedule pressure that caused it. Net progress falls even though the pace appeared to rise, which is why the saving is illusory rather than merely delayed.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AE%BA%E8%AF%ADverified
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