Sustainable Productivity: Does speed destroy value?

As summer's unofficial opening Memorial Day Weekend comes to a close, longer days and a real pull toward "unproductive" activities has me thinking about the consequences of faster and ostensibly more productive work.  With so many "slow" movements rising up these days, Slow Money and Slow Food are just two examples, I am wondering whether the "slow down" movement may have something to teach  us about how value is created.

Can a case be made for slowing down?

Sunday's New York Times seems focused on this notion in every section, most directly in the Op-Ed piece by the U.K.'s Tim Jackson Let's Be Less Productive. But sprinkled throughout the paper one finds articles on stay-cations and even a piece by David Byrne on the joys of urban cycling, This Is How We Ride.  Each in its own way accentuating the pleasures of slowing down, focusing on the quality of each experience rather than the quantity of its output.

With apologies to readers without NYT access, the article that hit closest to home was the one describing the "other side" of JP Morgan Chase's three billion dollar failed bet.  We find ourselves asking once again, "How is it that such smart people made such a series of breathtakingly dumb, nearly catastrophic mistakes?" Transaction speeds have clearly exceeded traders' abilities to think about them strategically.

When pattern recognition is coupled with instinct the most successful traders can see clearly both risk and opportunity.With machine processing time far exceeding their ability to follow trades as they unwind, perhaps even the most gifted traders are unable to recognize patterns as they emerge.

By way of contrast, I offer a brief history lesson.

30 years ago, folks who worked at the retail end of these transactions were called "stockbrokers."  Their roster of clients was called their "book" because it was in fact a ledger, an actual book.  At the end of each trading day, the broker was expected to record each transaction by hand in two different ways:

• The first was to record each transaction that built or liquidated a position in shares of a particular company.  With each manual entry the broker had time to look for patterns in price movement or in his or her decision making process. While reflecting on the transactions questions like, "Why am I buying/selling this company?" "How is the price changing day-to-day?" would invariably come up. 
• The second requirement was to record each transaction in a particular client's account.  Again, with each entry the broker would have a moment to consider the role of each transaction on behalf of the client and its role in the overall portfolio.  Small moments that slowed the process down, allowing for reflection.

Electronic broker books changed the human interface and began speeding up the process in the 1980s.  Taking time to record and reflect was replaced by a faster and arguably more accurate system.  As volume increased, trading margins vanished taking much of the value of the client/advisor relationship with it.

For anyone who worked on Wall Street back then, it's easy to imagine new disasters looming. Regardless of the popular perception that JP Morgan Chase's CEO Jamie Dimon breezed through Shareholder Meeting, his firm lost revenue and talent and its impeccable perception as The Street's best-managed bank. Dimon was clearly uncomfortable as he spoke with his shareholders;  his rushed, staccato delivery was so uncharacteristic of his usual, affable "Master of the Universe" presentation style. From where I sat, the speed of his delivery matched the speed and volume of the transactions that unwound his firm's profoundly unsuccessful bet.

Like Barry Schwartz shared during his Ted Talks-The Paradox of Choice, making the case that bountiful choice adds no value to our lives; I wonder if we've reached productivity's natural limit.

Could the value created by slowing down make productivity more sustainable?