Festina Lente - Hurry Slowly

“I don't wanna move fast, I wanna move correctly" —Rick Ross

Festina Lente: “I don't wanna move fast, I wanna move correctly" —Rick Ross

What does Jesus teach us, that the Emperor Augusts, the Medici dynasty, Bernard Arnault and rappers like Rick Ross, Jay Z and Nipsey Hussle confirm?

I recently turned 25. I received a birthday message from a mentor, a Member of Parliament I’m privileged to learn from. Part of it said: “Here is my hope for you in 2024, my urging for you is a mindset that paces your years by embracing your days … you want to do great things and you are already. You have such big bold vision - it’s compelling…. Pace yourself son, make your every moment meaningful and special. Don’t be in a hurry, you don’t have to be… you have all the time in the world. I promise you, be less urgent, be more grateful. Be less panicked, be more paced.” It’s sentiment very much echoed words my parents said days before. He ended the birthday message with one of the first scriptures I learned as a child: “Help us to remember that our days are numbered, and help us to interpret our lives correctly… Only you can satisfy our hearts, filling us with songs of joy to the end of our days.. . Come work with us, and then our works will endure; you will give us success in all we do.” Psalms 90:12-17.

It’s always struck me that Jesus, whose impact on history is so significant that we base the calendar around his death, was only active in his core mission for three years. We hear about his birth and early infancy, which was full of adversity, as the occasion was significantly threatening enough to make the King kill every male toddler under 2 in the region. Baby Jesus was essentially a refugee, spending his early years hiding across the sea in neighbouring Egypt. We then briefly hear about him again, aged 12, wise beyond his years, spending 3 days, locked in, learning and debating with some of the greatest academic and spiritual minds of his time. This was just before the age where he would begin to be seen as a man, in his Jewish tradition, and gives us a flavour of what he was already on. We then don’t hear from him again until he was 30. We are given no information on what he spent his formative foundational years doing, aged 12-30. We know he worked as a carpenter, we know he studied the scriptures vigorously (already evidenced aged 12) and, whilst not recorded anywhere, he must have practiced public speaking, because he was able to captivatingly storytell to audiences of thousands without a microphone. Radio silence, for 18 years. I’m sure His first recorded miracle, when he did finally unveil himself, was also executed in silence. He then went on to change the course of history in 3 years, aged 30 to 33. You should read about those eternity-changing three years but in some ways, I’m more curious about the 30 focussed years of patiently laying foundations that we aren’t shown, that made everything else possible.

Bernard Arnault, Chairman of LVMH and the wealthiest man in the world at the time of writing, said “I think in business, you have to learn to be patient. Maybe I'm not very patient myself. But I think that I've learned the most is be able to wait for something and get it when it's the right time.” My few entrepreneurial wins have also confirmed Arnault's wisdom, that mastery of the art of opportune timing is critical to successful dealmaking. On the flip side, I'm all too aware of needless and self-inflicted delays I’ve experienced as a consequences of my impatient attitude. The lessons from both my wins and losses are teaching me to apply what I am calling ‘proactive patience,’ still applied with aggressive urgency.

It turns out this isn't a new concept and there is even a motto that has kept world leaders in good stead for millennia. ‘Festina lente’ is an oxymoronic classical  adage, meaning "make haste slowly” or “ hurry slowly” in Latin.  It has been adopted as a motto numerous times by some of the most influential people in history, particularly by the emperors Augustus and Titus and the Medici family. The essence of the phrase is that a specific activity should be performed with a proper balance of urgency and diligence. Rushing tasks causes mistakes to be made, which leads to poor outcomes. The work will need to be repeated which is a wasting valuable time or, worse still, the project ends in complete failure.  Emperor Augustus was particularly wary of reckless and impatient commanders on the battlefield, where a rash decision can lead to catastrophic errors, causing the loss of an army, and, in the process, the defeat of the nation. Likewise, indecision and procrastination are killers to destiny, with many great ideas lost to paralysis-by-analysis. It’s a delicate balance. Without brave action, there will be no wins to speak of; without calculated judgement, one poor decision will wipe all your progress away. It is for this reason that Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah, who left his legacy as the leader of  the African Independence movement, concluded that "revolutions are brought about by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought”. 

Festina lente is even more useful as a broader philosophical perspective for life, not just as an approach applied to the execution of specific tasks. Something beautiful happens when you move through life with "more haste, less speed”. You want to sow as many seeds as possible in the present to make your dreams a reality, whilst being willing to wait as long as it takes for them to start to bloom and become a harvest.  Gary Vee speaks to a similar concept when he advises entrepreneurs to practice “macro patience with micro speed”. This mindset allows you to keep a firm eye on your life’s vision and mission, but allows you to make progress towards the goal at a sustainable pace with a sense of certainty and composure, with urgency but not in a rush. This is easier to achieve when you focus on maximising quality inputs, relentlessly executing the things you can control, with no expectation of any output. Life doesn’t guarantee results, even for a job well done, but it does guarantee nothing will happen, unless you take a shot.

Hip hop mogul Rick Ross says "I don't wanna move fast. I wanna move correctly. I just don't wanna waste no time”. This as close to a modern  translation of festina lente as you will find. Rick Ross doesn't mind working on a project for a year, if it takes a year. He doesn't mind working on a legacy project for 40 years, if it is going to take 40 years. Rick Ross doesn't try to tackle a  one year project in six months but he also doesn’t tolerate that same project taking three years. If it requires one year, he will give the project one fully-focussed year, as it deserves, and then move on to the next play.  It is taking the approach that life is indeed a marathon, whilst trying to sprint as fast as possible, at each stage. Rome wasn’t built in a day but they were also laying bricks every hour.

This is the true lesson of the famous 17th century fable of "The Hare and the Tortoise", where Jean de la Fontaine alluded to the motto in his Fables, written between 1668–94. I was never a fan of this story as a kid, because I wasn't taught it correctly.  Something about the tortoise seriously irked five year old me. Fontaine noted that the tortoise "with a prudent wisdom hastens slowly”. The tortoise was portrayed as an innately virtuous and morally upright character. In fairness, the creature's determination, consistency and resilience despite its natural disadvantages are to its credit. What the tortoise lacked in talent, it made up for in tenacity - a real underdog story. 

In hindsight, maybe I didn't dislike the tortoise, I disliked the juxtaposition with the hare.... The hare was framed as intrinsically impatient, arrogant and unable to pace itself. I didn't think this was fair, probably because whilst many children rooted for the tortoise, I identified with the daring rabbit. The rabbit was exciting, he backed himself and he took risks; although he just didn’t have the stamina to see it through and his arrogance in napping cost him the race. I refused to totally demonise the rabbit in my mind, because I didn’t believe the two were mutually exclusively, long before I heard of “festina lente.” The secret is to replicate both the hare and the tortoise. The hare was right to strive to push himself, since he had the capacity, but he would have been wise to do so at a sustainable pace like the tortoise. The hare didn’t understand seasons - that there is a right time to wok and a right time to rest, and the race is NOT the time to rest! In the words of Kobe Bryant:

“JOB FINISHED?!”

As for the tortoise, it needed to get rid of its shell so it could compete or give up play a totally different game. There is no world where a tortoise should beat a rabbit. The tortoise didn't beat the rabbit, the rabbit beat himself! The tortoise won by a process of elimination. Do you want to win because everyone else fell asleep? Equally, there's nothing worse than losing when everything was set up for you to win. The solution: match the productive capacity of the hare with the persistent patience of the tortoise. In fact, classical imagery conveying the concept of 'festina lente' often featured a tortoise with a windsail on its back or a dolphin with anchors, while Enlightenment adaptations featured the head of a hare combined with the legs of a  tortoise and hare. 

A large part of success is simply staying in the game, even if it is painful and requires patience. Music Mogul Jay-Z said in conversation with billionaire investor Warren Buffett that “the genius thing that we did, was, we didn't give up. The inevitable setbacks and failures that come when travelling along Leaving Legacy Lane both require a perspective of patience to find the will to push through them. Luckily, this process breeds the character to exercise increased patience in the future. ” As legendary entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker (founder of Napster and first investor in Facebook) said  “Being a startup founder is like chewing glass. Eventually, you start to like the taste of your own blood.”  It doesn’t get easier, but you get stronger. Many child prodigies, like the hare, are unable to cope with failure because they haven’t experienced significant setbacks and, as a result, never reach the levels of true mastery to be considered a legend at the end of their lives. The first taste of difficulty is one they never recover from. On the contrary, one thing the tortoise had been prepared foe is the art of patiently progressing towards prosperity,  forged by a life of adversity due to its initially disadvantageous natural attributes.

Similarly, Nipsey Hussle summarises his famous Marathon Mindset: “I just didn’t quit. That’s the only distinguishing quality from me and probably whoever else is going through this, or went through this or is gonna go through this, is I ain’t quit”. Nipsey Hussle started off getting money in the street and tasted success early, before rap. He told NPR in an interview: “I remember being 19. I had reached all my adolescent goals. It was 10 years, 15 years ago almost. I had touched two bricks for the first time, and I felt myself getting pulled into a direction. Once you cross these invisible lines, it's hard to go back. So I felt myself make a decision: "What you gonna do, homie?" I had given up on music because I went broke so many times trying to do music when I was a teenager. I wasn't one of them types; I wanted to have money. I'd felt what it feels like to be independent and celebrated in my area — even on such a shallow level. For the girls to love me, having cars and having jewelry and being a young teenager; I was adolescent ballin'. I liked that feeling…. I'm looking at Jay-Z, Puffy, Master P — these guys have a $100 million. And it's a marathon; it's a long haul. But I don't know a man hustling that made a hundred mill. I know n***** that made it to $1 million, $10, maybe five. But none of them avoided the Feds. They were the man for five summers and they gave the state or the Feds 20 summers. So the risk versus reward didn't pan out. That same day, I went and sold all my equipment and sold my jewellery. Sold my Lincoln [luxury car]; I had these rims, these Alpina rims that everybody in L.A. kept asking me about. I did not want to sell it, but I made a decision. That was one of the best decisions of my life. Sold the Lincoln and I went to Guitar Center and my brother met me up there and matched me. We bought all the equipment.” Nipsey was willing to ‘sacrifice’ everything he built, his identity as ‘the man’ at an early age and all the trappings of success, to start from zero and build again in his true calling. He had to be patient, he had to trust the process, he had to embrace his RookieSzn. As he said, “stay down, till you come up. The game gone bless you”.

It’s helpful for your perspective to note that most successful people are middle aged or elderly, this thing simply takes time. Water will not boil until it hits 100 degrees celsius, no matter how much we want to rush. Certain things just take time, no matter how soon we want them to happen. This is particularly tough for young people today, having grown up with endless entertainment from sources like Tiktok, Microwave food and instant delivery on UberEats and almost anything delivered overnight via Amazon Prime. Unfortunately, success principles have been unchanged since the Stone Age. With the exception of entertainers, athletes and a literal handful of tech geniuses, most success comes later in life. In an age of comparison, with algorithms designed to showcase us this particular tiny but influential group of people, failure to recognise this can be extremely damaging. They don't serve as good benchmarks for an individual, no matter how elite they are.  Even those rare few who make it in entertainment or entrepreneurship early, have usually invested ten or twenty years into their craft, from the moment they could walk or talk. They didn't succeed faster, they just started much earlier. Festina lente still applies.

Leaving a legacy requires a process that cannot be skipped. Luckily, life is long, on average, especially in the modern day. Look at the timeless wisdom in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. In the book, Dr. Van Helsing says of a young Count Dracula, “he has all along, since his coming, been trying his power, slowly but surely; that big child-brain of his is working. Well for us, it is, as yet, a child brain; for had he dared, at the first, to attempt certain things he would long ago have been beyond our power. However, he means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow. Festina lente may well be his motto.” You may not have centuries ahead of you like Dracula, but thanks to modern medicine, you might just live to a century, so act like it. Think in decades, execute the plan with proactive patience. Let it be said of you: “he/she means to succeed, and a (wo)man who has many decades before him/her can afford to wait and to go slow. Festina lente is his/her motto.” RookieSzn, we make haste slowly, we stay down, till we come up

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Actionable steps:

It may be hard to imagine what you or your life will even look like in ten years, even physically, but three years is easier to conceive of. 

This is a chunk of time you’re familiar with, with most undergraduate and even doctorate programs being completed in this timeframe. In the UK, architecture and medical students study for an average of five years in university, followed by two years work experience. Likewise, in the UK, law students study a 3 years undergraduate, followed by 3 year process of further legal study and a training contract. In essence, three to five years is recognised by most professions as a reasonable timeframe to gain lifelong skills. The first three to five years is the critical foundation period required to get a business off the ground towards sustainability and profitability.  An individual’s life can look remarkably different with 3 to 5 focussed years. One of my closest friends went from being a first year student at a UK university, having never picked up to an American football, to having won the Grey Cup Championship in the Canadian Football League and starting his first season in the NFL within 5 years.  I have friends who have built business worth almost $100 million in that time frame, whilst at university. With single-minded focus, you’ll be shocked what can be achieved in such a short timeframe. 

Set some milestones as to what you want to have measurably achieved in the next 3-5 years? It is not impossible to have made your first million or become a pilot or do almost anything you can imagine in that time frame, so dream big! Set 1-3 major milestones, the goals you’d like to achieve in that time and be as specific and clear as possible, make sure it is relevant and consistent to your Vision and Mission and set a clear date for you to achieve it by. 

The biggest risk with your 3-5 year milestones is not starting or giving up because five years seems like a long time. I promise you, it is not. At the time of writing, I am over 3 years from graduating from university and it feels like yesterday. There are so many plans that I had at that time, which if I had committed and stayed consistent since then, I would have achieved already. However, I decided it would take too long and didn’t start. Here I am now, newly 25 years young and only 3 years later, wishing I had started and seeing peers who started my idea at that time starting to see the fruits of success of the seeds they sowed just three short years ago. I can either cry about that for another 3 years, or I can charge lost time to the game, be grateful for the success I have had and plot the next focussed phase of the marathon. Set your milestone and start making moves, then stay locked in on the mission.

For me, reflecting on 25, I have nothing but endless things to be grateful for. When I take a step back, God has been so good. I don’t say that in the cliché way, because believe me, if anyone feels like its never enough, it’s me. Over a quarter century, true to my name’s meaning in Yoruba, life has shown me that “God is worth having”. Wins and losses, ups and downs, that’s the game, but, for the most part, I wouldn’t have played it any other way. Plenty of mistakes and lessons, for sure, but in 24 years, I can say I’ve tried and come out with minimal regrets. I can look back at 15-year-old me and see that he accomplished every single thing and more on his 10 year plan. It’s a great time to get the journal out and set some new 5, 10, 15, 25, 50 and 75 year plans!

RookieSzn continues… Festina lente.