How Does Our Reaction Speed Assist or Limit Our Best Lives?

This is Johanna Rothman’s December 2025 Create an Adaptable Life Newsletter. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.

Now that I’ve had this big birthday, people are asking me if I plan to slow down. As always, with these interesting questions, the answer depends on the context. If the context is driving, I’ll follow the rules of the road. But if the context is what I choose to do for work and life, it’s time to examine why I choose to increase or limit my reaction speed.

Reasons for Increased Reaction Speed

We hear lots of reasons for speed in our lives and at work:

Objects in motion tend to remain in motion. That’s where we hear: “use it or lose it.” Or, for habits, the more repeatable we can make a habit, the more likely we are to repeat it.
The faster we work, the faster we can learn from our efforts. (That’s the idea of short feedback loops.)
Even better, if we have deliverables to other people, the faster we work, the faster we learn if they find value in what we deliver.

While I could use work as an example, I’ll use my writing.

The faster I write (in any genre), the more likely I am to want to write again tomorrow. In addition, my writing speed helps me finish a given piece. Even better, my speed helps me learn faster about my writing. In the words of the flow metrics: the faster I write, the less WIP (Work in Progress) I have, the lower my cycle time, the more throughput I have, and the less aging (old WIP).

My writing speed creates a positive reinforcing feedback loop. These are all Good Things.

When I’m slow, I start to lose interest in finishing this piece. The writing sits somewhere, losing value daily. Worse, because it sits there, I have more ideas that have nowhere to go. The quality of my writing decreases as the piece rambles on and on.

But speed is not always a good idea. Sometimes, we might limit the speed of our reactions.

Reasons to Limit Our Reaction Speed

I am one of those extroverts who need to speak in order to understand what I know. (It’s okay if you introverts laugh at me. I’m used to it.) However, that has limitations:

My mouth often gets the better of me—the words emerge before I even know I’m speaking. If I could stop talking, I might offend fewer people.
If I stop writing that email, text, or comment, I might not get caught in the middle of a social media storm. (I’m better at stepping back from this than I used to be. Not nearly good enough.)
Instead of making a calm, cool decision, I make hot decisions that I might regret later. Hot decisions are part of Kahneman’s System 1 thinking. That’s often why people advise us to “Sleep on that decision.”

When should we react fast? When should we limit our reaction times? It all depends on the context for our best lives.

When Does Reaction Speed Affect Your Best Life?

Every reaction does cause another reaction. That’s why I used the idea of a pendulum at the top of this newsletter. Sometimes, we don’t know the reactions we will create. Or how someone else’s reaction will affect us. That’s why our context matters so much.

But experience matters even more. My early nonfiction writing was okay. The ideas were often better than the expression of those ideas, the actual writing itself. I had a hard time trusting that my writing was any good. (That’s where I am in my fiction writing now.)

Trusting ourselves might be the biggest problem we have when it comes to reaction speed. The more we practice and become comfortable with our capabilities, the more we can trust our reaction speed.

That’s why I don’t always trust myself with my verbal reactions. I have experience that I am too often a jerk. That does not lead to my best life.

Experience, trust, even our self-esteem, all can help us decide how to use our reaction speed to assist with our best lives.

I’m not slowing down my reaction speed for my writing, even as I slow some of my other commitments. So far, that’s working for me. Where will you choose to speed up or slow down your commitments?

Announcements…

I have a pre-launch page for my Kickstarter for Effective Public Speaking: How to Use Content Marketing With Stories to Show Your Value. See https://www.jrothman.com/speakingkickstarter. I have learned a ton about Kickstarter as I work through the feedback others have graciously offered. If you click on the “Notify me” button, you give Kickstarter permission to email you when I launch the campaign. That’s it. Just an email. Thanks in advance.

I opened registration for the January 2026 Writing Workshop 1: Free Your Inner Writer & Sell Your Nonfiction Ideas. This is the last writing workshop I will offer where you can get my feedback on your writing.

If you are part of the agile community, consider checking out The Agile Network. Also, don’t miss out on discounted membership options. Use Discount Code: ROTHMANPMC33 to get 33% OFF all memberships.

Reasons for Increased Reaction Speed

Reasons to Limit Our Reaction Speed

When Does Reaction Speed Affect Your Best Life?

Announcements…

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