ON SLOWING DOWN TO MOVE FORWARD

Why Speed Isn’t the Same as Progress

C.S. Lewis once wrote about the absurdity of hurrying down the wrong road. When you’re lost, speeding up doesn’t help. It only takes you further from where you need to be. The wiser move is to stop, pause, and turn around.

That image has stayed with me. Because so often, when life feels uncertain, our instinct is to push harder on the accelerator. We chase productivity, fill calendars, run faster—anything to avoid the stillness that might tell us we’re heading the wrong way.

Last year, I stepped off the road altogether. I took twelve months away from building and climbing to spend time with my kids. For the first time in years, I wasn’t sprinting toward the next goal. I wasn’t focused on more. I was simply present.

And in that stillness, I realised something simple but profound: time and energy are not the same thing.

The Greeks had two words for time: Kronos and Kairos.

Kronos is the tick-tock of the clock—deadlines, schedules, the relentless forward march. It’s the time that rules our diaries, the reason we measure our days by what we’ve produced.

Kairos is different. It’s qualitative. It’s the kind of time you feel in a child’s laughter, or in a conversation that lingers long after the words end. It’s the moment of being alive, not just passing through.

Our culture worships Kronos. But it’s Kairos we remember.

We confuse busyness with progress. We imagine that speed equals momentum. But rushing often makes us reactive—caught in the urgent at the expense of the important.

Slowing down is not about doing less. It’s about noticing more.

When you pause, you can ask: Am I on the right road? Am I spending my life on what matters? Without that pause, you can spend decades running in the wrong direction.

Energy, too, works differently from time. Time is fixed. We each get twenty-four hours. But energy fluctuates. It renews. It depletes. It depends on how we care for our bodies, our minds, our relationships.

Stepping back last year reminded me: I have the rest of my life to make money. But I’ll never get those particular summers with my kids back. And no amount of speed will recover what was lost in their place.

When we slow down, life deepens. We notice what matters. We see where the road bends. We discover Kairos moments hidden inside the ordinary.

Slowing down isn’t weakness. It’s alignment. It’s making sure you’re walking the right path before you run.

So perhaps the question isn’t, How much can I achieve?

Perhaps it’s, How deeply can I live?

Because the truth is, you’ve got the rest of your life to run. For now, maybe it’s time to walk.

This reflection lives at the heart of The Conscious Currency and in the work I share with clients. Money, time, energy—they’re not about speed. They’re about alignment with what matters most.