The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter and Live Better in a Fast World. Carl Honore
medical history reads like a whistle-stop tour. Over the last two decades my back has been twisted, cracked and stretched by a procession of physiotherapists, masseurs, osteopaths and chiropractors. Aromatherapists have rubbed birch, blue chamomile and black pepper oils into my lower lumbar region. Reflexologists have worked the back-related pressure points on the soles of my feet. I have worn a brace, guzzled painkillers and muscle relaxants, and spent a small fortune on ergonomic chairs, orthotic insoles and orthopedic mattresses. Hot stones, hot cupping, electric currents, heat pads and ice packs, crystals, Reiki, ultrasound, yoga, Alexander Technique, Pilates – yup, been there, done all of that. I have even visited a Brazilian witch doctor.
Yet nothing has worked. Sure, there have been moments of relief along the way, but after two decades on the treatment treadmill my back still aches – and it’s getting worse.
Perhaps I just haven’t found the right cure for me. After all, others have conquered back pain using techniques from my treatment plan, and even that Brazilian witch doctor came with glowing references. Or maybe, and this seems far more likely, Dr Woo is right. In other words, I treat every single cure for back pain as a quick fix, targeting the symptoms without addressing the root cause, revelling in its temporary relief, chafing when progress slows or demands more effort before moving on to the next treatment at the drop of a hat, like a chronic weight-watcher flitting from one diet to the next. The other day I spotted a web link peddling ‘Magnet Therapy’ as a panacea for back pain. My first thought was not: ‘Snake oil, anyone?’ It was: ‘Can I get that in London?’
This book is not a back pain memoir. Nothing is more tedious than listening to other people drone on about their aches and ailments. What makes my losing battle with my lumbar region worth exploring is that it points up a much bigger problem affecting every one of us. Let’s be honest: when it comes to chasing instant results, I am not alone. In every walk of life, from medicine and relationships to business and politics, we are all hooked on the quick fix.
Looking for shortcuts is nothing new. Two thousand years ago Plutarch denounced the army of quacks hawking miracle cures to the gullible citizens of Ancient Rome. At the end of the eighteenth century infertile couples queued up in hope of conceiving in London’s legendary Celestial Bed. The amorous contraption promised soft music, a ceiling-mounted mirror and a mattress stuffed with ‘sweet new wheat or oat straw, mingled with balm, rose leaves, and lavender flowers’, as well as tail hairs from the finest English stallions. An electric current allegedly generated a magnetic field ‘calculated to give the necessary degree of strength and exertion to the nerves’. The promise: instant conception. The cost for one night of fertile fumbling: £3,000 in modern money.
Today, though, the quick fix has become the standard across the board in our fast-forward, on-demand, just-add-water culture. Who has the time or patience for Aristotelian deliberation and the long view any more? Politicians need results before the next election, or the next press conference. The markets panic if wobbly businesses or wavering governments fail to serve up an instant action plan. Websites are studded with ads promising fast solutions to every problem known to Google: a herbal remedy to reboot your sex life; a video to perfect your golf swing; an app to find Mr Right. In the old days, social protest entailed stuffing envelopes, going on marches or attending meetings in town halls. Now many of us just click ‘Like’ or fire off a sympathetic tweet. All over the world, doctors are under pressure to heal patients in a hurry, which often means reaching for a pill, the quick fix par excellence. Feeling blue? Try Prozac. Struggling to concentrate? Join Team Ritalin. In the never-ending quest for instant relief the average Briton now pops, according to one estimate, 40,000 pills in a lifetime. I am certainly not the only impatient patient in Dr Woo’s waiting room. ‘The easiest way to make money today is not to heal people,’ he says. ‘It is to sell them the promise of instant healing.’
Indeed, spending money has become a quick fix in itself, with hitting the mall touted as the fastest way to lift sagging spirits. We joke about ‘retail therapy’ as we show off that new pair of Louboutins or the latest iPad case. The diet industry has turned the quick fix into an art form. ‘A bikini body by next week!’ the ads scream. ‘Lose 10 pounds … in ONLY 3 days!’
You can even buy a quick fix for your social life. If you need a workout partner at the gym, a best man for your wedding or a kindly uncle to cheer your children at sports day, or if you just want a shoulder to cry on, you can now hire any of the above from rent-a-friend agencies. The going rate for a pal to hang out with in London is £6.50 per hour.
Every quick fix whispers the same seductive promise of maximum return for minimum effort. Trouble is, that equation doesn’t add up. Think about it for a moment: is worshipping at the altar of the quick fix making us happier, healthier and more productive? Is it helping to tackle the epic challenges confronting humanity at the start of the 21st century? Is there really an app for everything? Of course not. Trying to solve problems in a hurry, sticking on a plaster when surgery is needed, might deliver temporary reprieve – but usually at the price of storing up worse trouble for later. The hard, unpalatable truth is that the quick fix never truly fixes anything at all. And sometimes it just makes things worse.
The evidence is all around us. Even as we drop billions of pounds on diet products promising Hollywood thighs and Men’s Health abs in time for summer, waistlines are ballooning all over the world. Why? Because there is no such thing as One Tip to a Flat Stomach. Academic studies show that most people who lose weight on diets regain it all, and often more, within five years. Even liposuction, the nuclear option in the slimming arms race, can backfire. Fat sucked from a woman’s thighs and abdomen usually resurfaces within a year elsewhere on her body, as bingo wings, say, or shoulder flab.
Sometimes, the quick fix can be worse than no fix at all. Look at ‘retail therapy’. Buying the latest Louis Vuitton bag may lift your mood, but the effect is usually transient. Before long you’re back online or in the mall hunting for the next thrill – while unopened bills pile up like snowdrifts by the front door.
Look at the damage wrought by our penchant for pills. Surveys suggest that nearly two million Americans now abuse prescription drugs, with more than a million hospitalised every year by the side effects of medication. Overdosing on legal pills is now a leading cause of accidental death in the US, where the black market in hard-to-get medication has fuelled a sharp rise in armed robberies at pharmacies. Even neonatal units are reporting a spike in the number of babies born to mothers with painkiller addictions. And it’s not a pretty sight: newborns suffering from withdrawal scream, spasm and vomit, rub their noses raw and struggle to eat and breathe.
You certainly cannot solve hard problems by just throwing money at them. To mend its ailing public schools, New York City began linking teacher pay to pupil performance in 2008. After forking out more than $55 million over three years, officials scrapped the programme because it was making no difference to test scores or teaching methods. It turns out that fixing a floundering school, as we will see later in the book, is a lot more complicated than just doling out cash bonuses.
Even in business, where speed is usually an advantage, our fondness for the quick fix is backfiring badly. When firms hit choppy waters, or come under pressure to goose the bottom line or jack up a sagging stock price, the knee-jerk response is often to downsize. But shedding staff in a hurry seldom pays off. It can hollow out a company, demoralise the remaining workforce and spook customers and suppliers. Often it leaves deeper problems untouched. After sifting through 30 years’ worth of longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, Franco Gandolfi, a professor of management, came to a stark conclusion: ‘The overall picture of the financial effects of downsizing is negative.’
The rise and fall of Toyota is a cautionary tale. The Japanese car-maker conquered the world by obsessively tackling problems at their source. When something went wrong on the assembly line, even the lowliest worker could pull a cord, known as the Andon rope, which would cause a buzzer to ring and a light bulb to flash overhead (‘andon’ means ‘paper lantern’ in Japanese). Like a toddler, staff would ask ‘Why, why, why?’ over and over again, until they reached the root cause of the problem. If it turned out to be serious, they might stop the entire production line. In every case, they would devise a permanent solution.
But