Accelerate, Accelerate, Accelerate
One quality of mine that I've learned to embrace is wanting to always move faster. Accelerate within the limit. My brain is wired to have an extreme sense of urgency, because I finally grasp that time is something we never get back. We must squeeze our time dry. The equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me is when somebody says "we can't ship this feature for a few months". No, we don't have time to twiddle our thumbs.
Nat Friedman said it, and I can't unsee it: a week is 2% of the year. That punched me in the gut. So when somebody says let's take a month to do x task, my mind goes towards "are we really going to take 8% of the year?" It's how I view things now, and helps me see the need to accelerate wherever possible. If you don't act with urgency, the seemingly minuscule 2% weeks, will fly by to 10%, 20%, 50%, until the year is over. Act with the mindset that time is precious and to do everything you can to get everything out of the time you have.
My favorite thing ever is seeing people who thrive on speed. The people who are constantly shipping, iterating, and building faster than the status quo. It gets me fired up seeing somebody go from idea -> product in a weekend. How can that not get you inspired to move quicker?
The most extraordinary companies we know act with urgency. For example, Tesla or SpaceX both broke all preexisting notions surrounding how fast you can move. Musk catches a lot of flak for his outrageous deadlines that are nearly always not met. However, what people forget is because of the deadlines, they finished in half of the time, even if over the predicted timeline. Say they wanted to develop the design for a new car, Musk may say "get it done in two weeks", it may get done in three weeks rather than two months.
As I go through life, I'm optimizing to surround myself with people who want to get things done much faster than everybody else. I want to ship and ship fast. It's so rare to see, but when you see it, you can't strive for anything else.
Embracing speed means recognizing that every moment not advancing is a moment lost—time, unlike other resources, is irrevocably spent. The mantra "fail fast, learn fast, improve fast" encapsulates the spirit of high-velocity teams that push the boundaries of what's possible. To waste time is to squander the one asset you can never replenish — acknowledge this, and you'll approach each project with the importance it deserves. Move fast, have urgency, and accelerate.