When I heard my mentor say that for the first time, my mind just froze.

“How is it possible?” I thought, “Slow is fast, and fast is slow? The logic just doesn’t align.”

For the longest time, I believed that the world worked on linear outcomes. 2 + 2 always equals 4. And that’s why, when it came to growth and success, I believed that the faster I was, the more easily (or rather quickly) I would get the achievements I wanted.

So, when I heard, “Slow is fast. Fast is slow.” It sounded like a good philosophy, but not quite practical because the real world just doesn’t work that way.

I am proud to admit today that I was wrong.

The real world indeed works that way because true success is not a linear mathematical outcome. It’s more of a Picasso painting where the shapes are unusual, almost asymmetrical, and yet they come together to form a beautiful canvas. How? None of us can be sure. It just happens.

And that’s why you would have heard so many successful people say, “Honestly, I don’t know how I made it big. I always believed I would. That’s what I always had. But I have been very lucky to have met the right people who gave me the best opportunities. That’s how I eventually made it here.”

It’s not a coincidence that so many successful people say that.

It’s the truth.

That’s why when you study successful people, you can decode as many principles of their life and work as you want, but you can never decode their strategy.

Because they themselves don’t have a set strategy!

If someone likes to create an image of being the ultimate creator, they will tell you they had the exact strategy figured out when they started, but chances are they’re lying.

They would have the principles, yes, but the strategy of their success evolved as they learned, failed, tried new things, and gained new perspectives.

The mistake we make is thinking, “Oh I must figure everything out before I start. That’s what the most visionary and successful people do.”

Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to become a successful doctor, parent, writer, entrepreneur, techie, or anything else; that thinking is a recipe for overwhelm, stress, and failure.

That’s when you try to be fast and figure out as much as you can in the shortest amount of time, but you don’t get success in return, you get burnout.

Then you wonder, “What’s wrong with me? I am trying so much. I am putting my heart and soul into this goal, and still, I’m stuck!”

Well, something did go wrong—your approach to the goal.

In trying to figure out the strategies, action steps, and sure-shot roads to success, you forget the most crucial reality of this world: everything is uncertain.

No matter what you do, life can just throw you a curveball, and the strategy that was worth a million dollars yesterday can be worth a crumpled piece of paper in the bin tomorrow.

All your plans of action that extend a few years down the line can be overturned if a war breaks out in your country tomorrow. And looking at our world over the past decade, this is not a far-fetched dystopian scenario; it’s a reality for millions as I am writing this and you’re reading it.

Everything that you believe you need to get done before you can be successful can all be pointless if one of those big AI companies suddenly announces a new AI capable of doing 90% of your job. Overnight, you’ve become useless, and so have your plans of growth.

We live in times of ever increasing uncertainty. And it’s not the first time this has happened. If you read history, you’ll understand that more than dogs and cats, uncertainty has been humanity’s best friend.

And you could come up with any strategy for success, get it vetted by experts, and proclaim, “This is it! This is what works!” and a few days, months, or years later, the world will turn around in such a way that you and the experts would no longer be relevant.

That’s why agility matters more than strategy.

And the agile person not only survives the storms of uncertainty, he or she thrives in it.

But to make that happen, you need to get out of your head, out of these hurried plans you are chasing, and be willing to slow down.

Only then can you sit with the uncertainty rather than run away from it. When you do that, you gain the most important asset every successful person has: awareness.

Think about it. If you’re just in a hurry chasing goals and plans, believing in linear success, you don’t have the time or mental space for building awareness. You’re like a horse with blinders. You can only see the plan, the future, and the reality in front of you.

But because of that, you’re completely unaware of the reality that’s coming to hit you like a train from both sides.

And when the crash happens, you say, “I did everything right. I don’t know what went wrong. I guess I’m just unlucky.”

You’re not unlucky. You were just unaware.

And you can change that now. 

Stop focusing on getting a strategy for success. It’s a lost cause. The world is changing way too fast for you to blindly follow any one strategy for years.

Focus on principles instead, and the strategy will carve itself. 

Ask yourself, “How can I build agility, resilience, long-term thinking, balance, creativity, confidence, love, and much more?”

And don’t ask yourself, “How can I start making $10K a month selling stuff on Amazon?”

The first question gives you the principles and skills of success. Not the strategy, but the agility to succeed in any environment you find yourself in.

The second question, well, it stops being relevant the moment Amazon changes any one of its policies.

And you’re left in the wind.

Now, the funny thing that happens is, when you focus on principles, you will slow down. Instead of grinding yourself in work for sixteen hours, you’ll probably work for just eight, but spend an extra few hours building the principles. 

To anyone who is too short-term in their thinking, you will seem foolish. But you have the awareness they don’t. And that’s why you will be on the fast lane to success! That’s the foundation that gives you the confidence to say, “Take everything from me. Put me in a country I’ve never been to. And I’ll be successful in less than a year.”

That confidence doesn’t come from a fixed strategy; it comes from sorted principles.

And principles give you the freedom to apply them in any context. That’s what you need for success in an uncertain world.

Where everything, including your career path, could be taken away from you, and you could still say, “I’ll figure it out.”

How? You probably won’t have an answer for that.

But inside, you know you will. Because you have slowed down enough to see the world as it is, to build the principles, and to know how to use them—regardless of circumstances.

That’s real strength.

And that’s why, slow is fast, fast is slow.