Speed is often a substitute for the energy we lack.
When I say that, I don’t mean speed in an overall sense (how fast we get a project done, or how fast we can move from A to B), but speed in a personal sense (how fast we move while getting it done, or while going from A to B).
When we are consistently moving at high speed, it’s tempting to perceive ourselves as having lots of energy.
And yet, often the opposite is true.
It’s precisely when we lack energy that we’ll compensate by producing more speed.
Have you ever stayed up for a few days in a row and gotten past the point where your fatigue floored you?
I can’t speak for everyone, but in my case, that leads to a high frenetic speed of doing things.
This same constant high speed state—which may surprise you if you didn’t know—is also a classic indicator of burnout.
Speed can look like energy when we haven’t learned to distinguish between them yet. But they are not the same thing.
Think of them as two axes on a matrix. Here’s what each of the quadrants would look like:
Energy is a resource. Speed is a way we spend it. Speed can compensate for a lack of energy because, much like a credit card, we can borrow future energy to achieve the speed we want (and we do get the bill later).
Each of the quadrants above represents a different relationship between how much speed and how much energy we have at any given moment:
1) The bottom left and top right quadrants can both be positive and negative.
Neither of these 2 quadrants is a sustainable way to live in and of themselves. But they keep each other in check.
The bottom left one restores our energy (by not using any speed) and the top right one spends it.
Ideally, we cycle between them for balance.
When we’re well regulated, we’ll generally use the positive word to describe your state (“restful”, “swift”).
When we’ve leant a bit too far in one direction, we’ll often counter it by entering the negative state of the other one (“lethargic”, “frenetic” ).
When we’re lethargic, we are restoring our energy but the energetic bank account is below zero, which is why the state feels negative.
When we are frenetic, we are spending more energy than we can afford. (When I say “can’t afford”, I don’t mean “don’t have”. That would be the bottom right quadrant, where we are spending energy while our energetic bank account is already below zero.)
2) The bottom right quandrant is best avoided unless necessary.
This is the quadrant of “busy-ness” and pushing through when you’re already depleted.
It is a necessary quadrant to have access to. Because sometimes our survival depends on it.
When we don’t have energy but the situation demands it, we must compensate with speed.
You can see this as overdraft on your energetic bank account. Good tool to have. Terrible not to have it (it could literally mean death sometimes). Not good to live in it forever (that too, could lead to death some time).
3) The top left quandrant is a balanced state.
It’s an amazing quadrant to live from and to aim for in your ways of being.
That said, there are plenty of situations where it is not the best way of operating. Which is why the others exist.
To navigate life effectively, we need all 4 quadrants.
You don’t want to respond to your toddler being trapped in a burning building by first popping in a guided meditation to center yourself fully. You want to be swift. And if you can’t be swift, you want to be frenetic.
And if you can’t be frenetic either, acting all wired up still has some degree of success rate for saving them, albeit much lower. Because—unlike the burning building—you’d be running on fumes, for both your actions and decisionmaking.
Bringing Awareness to Your Speed and Energy
At various times throughout the day, I invite you to exploriment with this matrix.
Just take a brief pause, and ask yourself:
1) Which quadrant am I operating in right now?
2) Is this the most effective for the situation at hand?
There are many reasons why we end up operating from suboptimal quadrants. If we are highly anxious, for example, we move with more speed than we need to by default.
Our beliefs and personality / identity can also play a role here:
- People who identify as spiritual can develop an attachment to the top left quadrant
- Type A personalities can stay stuck in the top right and struggle accessing the bottom left
- “Slackers” live in the bottom left and struggle accessing the other quadrants
- The bottom right can fuel addictions or dependencies and is sometimes addictive in itself. So once we enter it, it’s common to get stuck until we feel safe again.
Heuristics for How Much Speed and Energy to Use
There are no hard rules here, in general, it’s all about tuning into the situation and what it needs, then moving with any speed available to you that meets the needs of the situation without exceeding them too much.
That said, here are some shortcuts I find really helpful and which continue to be an ongoing practice for me:
- When in doubt, move to the top left
- Feeling too tired to sustain your current speed? Move to bottom left if the situation allows
- Are you moving unnecessarily slow (and things drag on)? Consider moving to top right
- Genuine deadline / time-bound commitment? Move to top right if accessible, if not, lean on the bottom right but move out ASAP.
- Genuine threat or risk and top right is unaccessible? Move to bottom right
- Stuck in bottom right? Move to bottom left as soon as possible to reset (or alternate between them and gradually spend more time on the left).
An important note about the quadrants on the left:
The only way to truly access these is to relax into them. If that is not possible, trying to force yourself to be in them will not work. Because forcibly slowing down your movement when you naturally want to go fast comes at a high energy cost (you have to control and contain yourself).
In such cases, it’s best to allow your natural rhythm first, even if it feels unsustainable, and over time acquire tools that help you slow down without forcing it.
You may notice that there tends to be a natural pace your body wants to move to, and that staying in one place is usually the result of something overriding it (either ignoring our signals and mentally overriding them, or simply not feeling safe—though the latter, I’d argue, is still an expression of our natural pace).
Eventually, you’ll develop an intuitive attunement to your natural rhythms and when to shift between these modes.