The Blinkist Life: When Everything Becomes a Task

It was a hot Sunday morning on the 27th of July. Not quite the early morning walk I had in mind, but a late one. I was walking with two of my children and our dog. As I watched my son carry the dog, a quiet truth about legacy, leadership, and succession planning began to stir in my heart. Earlier that morning, I had been reading On the Ground – A Memoir of Pastor Timothy Loh and his unique approach to Relational Discipleship, co-written by Joel Loh and Pastor Eugene Yow. The book captures the compassionate, relational legacy of Pastor Tim, a beloved leader at Every Nation Church Malaysia. I had only reached Chapter 4, but it already felt like one of those books you don’t want to rush through. It is the kind of book you sip slowly, like a cup of warm coffee on a quiet morning.

We live in a time where everything is built for speed. Books are summarized in 15-minute reads on Blinkist. Movies are compressed into five-minute explainers on social media. Life has been reduced to a highlight reel, optimized for clicks and velocity. But some stories, some lives, demand more. They invite us to slow down, to immerse, to reflect. Pastor Tim’s memoir is one of those. It’s not just a story to be understood. It’s one to be lived in. One that teaches us the deeper rhythm of legacy.

The Taskmaster Trap: When Speed Becomes a Way of Life

Much of my life was built on a system of checklists. From a young age, I was trained to execute, complete, and move on. Finish school, pass the exam, get the certificate, and deliver the outcome. During my years as a wedding photographer, I could run a shoot from start to finish entirely on my own. I didn’t just aim for beauty, I aimed for efficiency. Execute, deliver, next. When I organized classes in Melbourne, I knew how to run them with minimal time and resources, yet still hit the KPI. It became a pattern of pride: do more with less: Check. Check. Check.

That mindset spilled over into my studies. For my SPM accounting paper, I studied for three hours and passed where others had taken years to prepare. People applauded the shortcut. “Genius,” they called it, which felt like a badge of honour. But that badge came at a hidden cost. When I got to Monash and joined the accounting class, I realized how little I truly understood. What others grasped immediately, I needed to read five or six times just to barely keep up. My foundation was thin. I had passed, but I had not learned. And now, I was paying the price.

This is not just my story. It is our culture’s story. We live in a time that celebrates speed over substance. The world trains us to be efficient, not effective. We’re praised for how quickly we move, not how deeply we think. But neuroscience tells another story. Real learning, long-term retention, true understanding, is built through the slow layering of myelin in our brains. Myelin only grows with focused, repeated practice. Speed doesn’t make us stronger. Repetition does. Efficiency may get you the certificate. But it is immersion that forms the character.

That truth became even more evident when I got married. I entered marriage the same way I entered everything else: with a plan. We had a checklist, a budget, a clear sequence of milestones. It was all mapped out: proposal, photos, wedding, honeymoon, first anniversary, first child. But marriage is not a business plan, it’s not a startup you scale, and it definitely doesn’t respond to KPIs. It responds to presence and it requires uncomfortable conversations, inconvenient patience, mundane routines, and quiet choices to stay when it’s easier to walk away. There are no Blinkist summaries for marriage. You cannot shortcut your way to trust.

In fact, the more sacred something is, the less it can be rushed. A baby cannot be grown in five months. An oak tree doesn’t sprout in a weekend. And a marriage, no matter how perfect the ceremony, cannot be built in a spreadsheet. Relationships grow in the unoptimized hours. In the time that feels “wasted.” In the choice to sit quietly when you’d rather scroll your phone. And it’s not just about romance, it’s about any covenant, any commitment, any cause worth sacrificing for.

This realization has reshaped how I view everything, including leadership. We often promote people for their performance, but succession is not about performance. It is about formation. The deepest things in life, character, wisdom, trust, cannot be passed down in a Canva slides. They must be caught, not just taught. Watched, not just read. That means slowing down, letting people into your process, not just your results.

I now understand that rushing is not just inefficient. It is often unfaithful. Because the very things we try to fast-track are the things that were never meant to be rushed in the first place. Love, learning, leadership, legacy. None of these obey the rules of urgency. All of them ask for time and presence. All of them will cost you something. The faster you go, the more likely you are to skip what matters.

Immersion Over Execution: A New Measure of Success

As I grew older, I noticed my way of traveling began to shift. In my younger days, traveling meant covering as many destinations as possible in the shortest time. A travel agency would pack five locations into one day, and we would hop on and off the bus, snapping pictures and rushing on. It made for a good checklist, but not for deep experience. I would often leave places wishing I had just a few more hours to linger, to take in the atmosphere.

Now, I plan my own trips. I book my own flights. I stay in one place for an entire day. I take the train instead of a private car, just to feel the rhythm of the city and observe how people live. I don’t want to just visit anymore. I want to immerse, listen and to feel. I’ve come to believe that this is not only a better way to travel, but a better way to lead, to father, to build legacy.

Leadership succession follows the same principle. According to McKinsey, 70 percent of CEO transitions fail to meet their intended goals within three years. The reason? Successors are often installed quickly, handed titles and systems, but never immersed in the deeper story, values, and spirit of the organization. They are given the what, but not the why. And without the why, structure collapses.

This is why I’ve committed to being present during my wife’s confinement period. I visit her every day, without fail, not because I want the season to end. But because I want to be in it fully. Our newborn daughter is growing quickly, half a kilo every week. I can feel it in my arms. These are moments not to be optimized, but to be cherished. Some seasons must be walked through slowly, even aimlessly, allowing life to form us as we go.

Go Slow Where It Matters Most

There is a cost to rushing. Sometimes that cost is hidden until much later, but it always shows up. If I could sit down with my younger self, I would say, go fast in some things, but not in everything. Go fast when you’re buying pants, washing the car, clearing the inbox. These things are necessary, but not meaningful. Don’t spend your soul there.

But go slow where it matters: with your family, your values, and your wisdom. Spend time with people. Sit in the discomfort. Learn the long way. Let life shape you through repetition and presence. I used to spend hundreds on clothing. Now my most worn pair of pants cost RM28. They do the job, and they free me to focus elsewhere. What used to seem important has been redefined.

People like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Nas Daily wear the same outfit daily. At first, I thought they were just trying to be different. But the point is not simplicity for simplicity’s sake. It’s about reducing distraction. When your mission is clear, you stop wasting energy on what doesn’t matter. Presence is protected by clarity.

Succession, too, has a cost. It requires more than a transfer of documents. It requires a transfer of being. It’s not about building a perfect system, but about nurturing a living story. And that takes time, intentionality, and patience.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

The world teaches us that faster is better, and more is more. But leadership for legacy does not follow that rule. The deeper things, character, wisdom, trust, presence, cannot be rushed, they must be lived into.

If we want to raise leaders who build what lasts, we must walk with them slowly, not just assign tasks. We must let them see us, not just hear us. And we must choose immersion over efficiency, especially when it comes to love, learning, and legacy.

Because fast isn’t always forward. Sometimes the only way to lead well is to slow down and stay.