I've been in Paris for a combined 53 hours by the time this article is published, so take everything I write with a grain of salt, but there's an observation I can't shake.
Paris moves slowly. Not in an inefficient way. In a deliberate way. The meals take longer. The conversations aren't rushed. People sit at cafe tables for an hour over a single coffee without any visible guilt about what they should be doing instead. There is a relationship with time here that feels fundamentally different from what I experience most of the time.
And yet things get done. The city functions. The business happens. The work gets completed.
It made me think about the career advice I give most often, which tends to be about moving — making the decision, having the conversation, taking the next step. Move. Act. Go. And that's right, most of the time.
But there's a nuance I don't talk about enough: knowing when to move fast and when to move slowly is the actual skill.
Moving fast matters when the window is short. When an opportunity has an expiration date. When you've already gathered enough information and the bottleneck is just your own hesitation. When delay is the only real risk.
Moving slowly matters when the decision is irreversible. When the stakes are high enough that a mistake is hard to recover from. When you're making a choice that affects people beyond yourself. When the clarity you need is genuine, not just a disguise for avoidance.
The mistake most ambitious people make is applying the same speed to every decision. They sprint when they should pause and they stall when they should sprint. Both are expensive.
Sitting in Paris with a coffee that I'm not rushing reminded me that there's a time to go and a time to sit still and think. The career that lasts is usually built by someone who figured out the difference.