My daughter wanted to make a video to prove to a skeptical cousin that she could solve a Rubiks Cube. I told her the video had to be under two minutes long in order for me to be able to send it.

Until that moment, her fastest time solving her Rubiks Cube was two and a half minutes, but she was up for the challenge. She asked me mix up the puzzle and to set a timer, and then she started solving it.

But a strange thing happened. It was taking her longer to solve it than normal. Frustrated, she said, “The more I worry about my speed, the more mistakes I make.”

That was the problem. Instead of trying to solve the puzzle well, she was trying to solve it quickly. This was causing her to make mistakes she normally would not make.

I began thinking about my experience with jiu-jitsu. While it’s fun to roll (sparring for submissions) at a fast pace and a high intensity, this type of training tends to mask mistakes and it makes it very difficult to notice or fix them in real time. Conversely, rolling slowly, with a focus on clean, precise movements and transitions, allows for more intelligent decisions in the moment and this, somewhat surprisingly, helps to develop skills more quickly.

With this in mind, I told her to slow down and to focus on precision instead of speed. There’s a saying I told her, “‘Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,’ because it takes more time to fix the mistakes you make from rushing than it does to take your time and not make those mistakes.”

She asked me to scramble her Rubiks Cube again and to set a timer. She began solving the puzzle, this time more slowly, with a focus on precision instead of speed. When she announced that she was done, I stopped the clock. To both of our amazement, she had just beaten her best time by nearly forty seconds, and she did it by taking her time.