Every time I come back to the Bay from a business trip, it feels like going back to the future.
Not because of the demos or the new models or the agents running in the background. That part is expected now. Everyone has something moving faster than it used to. Work that took hours compresses into minutes. The tools are genuinely good and getting better everyday.
But the more work trips I make away, the more I notice something running underneath it all when I return.
The pace is faster. The direction is less clear.
There’s a kind of reactive energy in the air right now. People moving quickly, but mostly in response to what’s coming at them. It’s very inbox-driven, feed-driven, tool-driven. I thought about that scene from Alice in Wonderland, the Queen’s Red Race, where you have to keep running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. That’s what it feels like. Everybody running. Nobody going anywhere new.
A GP friend put it well in a conversation we had today. His team had been pushing on something internally: the difference between being reactive to everything coming in versus deciding what you actually want to do. Not that they were making bad decisions. But they questioned if they were making optimized ones. Too much motion, not enough intention.
The instinct right now is to meet speed with more speed. But I don’t think that’s where the real edge is.
I kept coming back to a Google commercial running during the NBA Playoffs. The one about Luka. They break down his step-back and land on a single line: the brake is better than the gas.
It’s not just how fast he can go. It’s how well he can slow down.
That’s what creates the separation. Defenders are prepared for acceleration. What they get instead is a pause, a shift, a moment of control that opens up space. Luka plays at his speed. And his deceleration is as much a weapon as anything else he does.
That translates more than we admit.
In a moment where everything is speeding up, slowing down deliberately can be an advantage. Deciding what matters before engaging with everything that doesn’t. Being intentional about who you spend time with instead of defaulting to whoever is in front of you. Taking the timeout instead of pushing through the run.
There’s real pressure to keep up appearances right now. To show you’re using the AI tools, seeing the deals, in the flow of everything. And there’s a fear that if you slow down, even for a moment, you’ll miss something.
But if everything is moving faster, there will always be another wave.
You don’t have to catch every one. You have to know which ones matter.
That’s the part the tools don’t solve. They can help you move, process, execute. They can’t decide what game you’re playing or what style you want to play it.
That still comes from judgment and taste. And in a market where everyone is getting faster, the people who know when to take the step-back may end up with the real edge.
Can you make your deceleration an advantage? I am.
with gratitude,
earn