Why Fast Thinking Is Is Killing Your Morale, Creativity, and Profits

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Special Ops with Emma Rainville
Episode: Why Fast Thinking Is Killing Your Morale, Creativity, and Profits
Date: October 7, 2025
Host: Emma Rainville
Guest: Tiago (Operations Team Member)

Main Theme:
Emma Rainville and her team member Tiago unpack the high-stakes consequences of "fast thinking" in business, discussing how a constant rush leads to morale issues, operational fires, lost creativity, and ultimately lower profits. They share strategies and personal anecdotes for slowing down thinking, embracing operational excellence, and carving out time for deep work—key to building more sustainable, profitable companies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fast Thinking Trap

• Consequences of Fast Thinking:
  • Speed leads to operational problems–“fires” that distract everyone from higher-value, creative work.
  • "When you create a bunch of fires, everyone's focused on operations instead of the creative part of your business, which is really what makes us the money."
    — Emma (00:15, 00:43, 01:44)
• Morale & Profitability:
  • Teams lose morale when caught perpetually fighting fires, and the business loses profitability and innovation.

2. The Role of the Visionary and the Operator

• Visionaries’ Strengths & Weaknesses:
  • Visionaries are prolific, creative, and quick—but their solutions can create unforeseen mid- or long-term issues.
  • "They're going to come up with solutions, which is one solution and one problem, like mixed together, probably a short-term solution and a midterm problem or a couple of them, actually."
    — Tiago (01:58)
• Operator as Counterbalance:
  • Operators help visionaries slow down, test ideas, and prevent chaos.
  • Emma stresses the importance of hiring people smarter than herself in the specific domains, to challenge ideas and operationalize plans.

3. The “Body” of the Entrepreneur & Speed

• Physical State Impacts Mental Pace:
  • Constant stimulation (coffee, stress) speeds up both body and mind, making it harder to slow down.
  • Emma and Tiago debate caffeine:
    • Tiago: "You probably shouldn't have seven espressos." (00:22, 03:47)
    • Emma: "I'll argue that with you. I can have seven espressos." (00:27, 03:47, 03:52)
  • Emma highlights how stimulants affect people differently, especially those with ADHD.

4. Letting Creativity Flow (And When to Rein It In)

• As operators, the instinct is to weed out "bad" ideas too early, sometimes stifling innovation.
• Let creativity come to life before poking holes. Heavy thinking comes after the creative phase.

"Visionaries I've worked with... have all said to me, like, hey, let creativity flow. Don't knock it before we've even hit, like, let creativity flow."
— Emma (05:35)

5. The Power of Deep Thinking and Slowing Down

• Tiago’s Framework for Deep Thinking:

  • Step back and ask “Why? What for?” to clarify goals.
  • Take a "drone view" for situational awareness.
  • Map out resources, timing, and implications—what’s noise, what’s waste, what’s mission-critical?
  • “Operations is economics... we have limited resources.”
    — Tiago (09:12)

• Fighting Noise:

  • Noise = anything (tasks, apps, messages) fragmenting attention or overwhelming systems.
  • Example apps: Slack, Google Drive, ClickUp, and email are key culprits.
  • Metaphor: “When you open the task administrator in your computer, like, you’re going to see all the processes running in the background and that’s taking processing power.”
    — Tiago (11:25)

• Avoiding Context-Switching:

  • Each new process or initiative increases “noise” and hurts productivity.

6. Practical Solutions and Tools

• Deep Work (Cal Newport):
  • Emma recommends reading Deep Work, and finding rituals to block off uninterrupted “deep” time—even for busy operators.
  • She blocks 2–3 stretches of two-hour "deep work" weekly, plus team deep-dive sessions monthly/quarterly (12:29-14:45).
  • “When I learn to quiet everything... I realized all of the pieces that were on the floor that I was leaving that really, if you're going to talk about operational excellence, shouldn't be left there.”
    — Emma (13:37)
• Tiago’s Ebook:
  • Resource: How to Slow Down and Reduce Noise—available free in the Visionary Vault.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Slowing Down, Challenging Visionaries:

  • Tiago: “The first part is actually hearing and listening. So if you give me that resource... it’s making myself time to dive in and analyze... what’s the purpose?” (07:11)
  • “Sometimes, just saying ‘no’—not because we won’t do it, but to trigger the other person.” (07:29)

• On Morale and Breakdowns:

  • Emma: “When you put a funnel at risk and it doesn’t work or it causes a lot of chaos on the back end of it, you absolutely kill your team morale. No one’s excited about a broken anything…” (08:24)

• On Operational Waste & Noise:

  • Tiago: “Noise is processing power... it can be context switching... every new process you add is noise added.” (11:04–11:25)
  • Emma: “I’m noise.”
    Tiago: “You can be. Yeah, you certainly can be.” (10:44)

• On Triggers & Pause Buffers:

  • Emma’s main triggers to “stop and think”:

    1. A staff member in trouble or nearing burnout.
    2. Dropping profits.
    3. Poor quality—anything that “makes us look less than excellence.” (15:38–16:53)

  • “Anything that makes the company look less than excellence… everything stops. There’s... a button that is in my office that is not real. But it is. And when I push that button, everything stops.”
    — Emma (16:20)

  • Tiago’s advice: “Even if it’s a 10-minute buffer, just say pause, like 10 minutes. Change it.” (17:04)

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Actionable Takeaways

• Read Deep Work by Cal Newport; implement weekly deep work sessions (12:29–14:45).
• Download Tiago’s ebook, How to Slow Down and Reduce Noise (available in the Visionary Vault).
• Audit your “noise” sources: Clean up Slack, Drive, ClickUp, and use buffers between tasks.
• Map your projects visually, challenging the "why" and "what for" every step.
• Identify your triggers—what situations cause you to speed up, and preemptively build in pausing routines.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–01:44: The problem with fast thinking: operational fires, morale, and profit.
• 01:55–03:12: Visionaries, stimulants, and the need to slow down.
• 03:53–07:11: Letting creativity flow, operator vs. visionary dynamics.
• 07:11–08:24: Slowing down: frameworks for deep analysis.
• 08:24–11:49: Practical examples of operational "noise" and how to tackle it.
• 12:29–14:45: Deep Work, shutting off distractions, and operational excellence.
• 15:09–16:53: Identifying “trigger” situations that require slowing down.
• 17:04: Tiago's pause-buffer trick for better decisions.

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Final Thoughts

Emma and Tiago offer a candid, practical exploration of why relentless forward momentum—if left unchecked—can be toxic for creativity, team morale, and profits. Their advice: slow down, get analytical, embrace deep work, and make time for strategic reflection. Download the playbooks, build pausing/buffer routines, and surround yourself with collaborators who can challenge and refine your vision.

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Transcript

[A]

Everything's moving so quickly that everybody is thinking fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. And it causes morale issues, profitability issues, creativity issues. What happens when you're thinking fast is you create a bunch of fires. And when you create a bunch of fires, everyone's focused on operations instead of the creative part of your business, which is really what makes us the money.

[B]

I think it's about the body. It's about calming down. You probably shouldn't have seven espressos.

[A]

I'll argue that with you. I can have seven espressos. When you're looking at a plan. I'm a visionary. What you're doing to make them stop and think about all the consequences.

[B]

Okay, the first part is actually.

[A]

Hi, thank you for joining us on another episode of Special Ops podcast today. Dun dun, dun, we have Tiago from our team. We're super excited. We're going to be talking about why speed thinking is killing morale, creativity and profits in your business. Tiago has written for you how how to Slow down and Reduce the noise. It's a ebook that he put together. It's in the Visionary Vault. You can find that over at www.specialopspodcast.com. i'm your host, Emma Rainville. Let's go. Let's get into it. So we're talking about this topic today because it's a big problem for us, for all of our clients. Everything's moving so quickly that everybody is thinking fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. And it causes morale issues, it causes profitability issues, and overall, it causes creativity issues. Because what happens when you're thinking fast instead of thinking things through dynamically is you create a bunch of fires. And when you create a bunch of fires, everyone's focused on operations instead of the creative part of your business, which is really what makes us the money. I'd love to hear your thoughts around that, your experience around that.

[B]

Certainly. So very happy to be here. The first thing is, I believe this is especially a problem with visionary entrepreneurs. They think fast. They think like very creatively, very fast. And they're prolific. And that's why I guess we love them. Right? But at the same time, you said it. They are going to come up with solutions, which is one solution and one problem, like mixed together, probably a short term solution and a midterm problem or a couple of them, actually. So how I like to think about this is, first of all, I think it's about the body. And I know I may go a bit hippie here, you know, and you know me already, Emma, but what's speeding up, first of all, is the body of the person. So if you think about a visionary entrepreneur, they are at speed, like in their mind and in their body. I remember I used to work with someone you met, you knew, and that's how we met. That's how we met. And when I met him and we. We are going to get to talk about team building, I realized that he had seven Nespressos every day. Seven. So there was absolutely no way that. I think you're probably guilty of that as well.

[A]

Seven. That's like before eight.

[B]

That must be too much.

[A]

I had five at breakfast with you today. Wow.

[B]

Yeah, I noticed two of those for sure.

[A]

Yeah, definitely. Definitely poured that cup about five times and took it to go while you guys left.

[B]

Wow. I think that's something that we don't look at it first, but the body is like the material substance, the basis of how you're going to think. And then we can think about some frameworks you may have and beliefs you may have that also help you be at that speed. So, first of all, I think it's about the body. It's about, like, calming down. You have a lot of mindfulness tricks for that. You probably shouldn't have seven espressos, and you can start lowering that down.

[A]

I'll argue that with you. I can have seven espressos. I drink coffee, not espresso, but I can have seven cups of coffee and.

[B]

Then.

[A]

Sit down and have a reasonable conversation with you all if I know it's coming and we've planned for it. And I think that's the thing to ask someone to change what they do in their daily dynamic. I think that a lot of visionary entrepreneurs, and I'm not, I wouldn't label myself as a visionary entrepreneur at all, but I identify a lot of the same traits as them, which is why I'm a really good integrator, because I understand how they think, because I think that way. And so coffee, caffeine, those type of stimulants for you might be a stimulant, but for someone with adhd, it actually slows you down. It actually is a calming effect. So when I have coffee, if I don't have coffee, it's actually a calming effect and it helps you be more focused. So I don't necessarily think it's a coffee, but let's go and dive into the actual slowing down and really thinking things through, because I'm guilty of this myself. One of the things that has made me so successful in the industry isn't my ability to do things. It's my ability to hire people who know how to do things and get them to be as loyal to me and to the work that we're doing and then believe in the vision. That's the only reason I've been successful. You know, Richard knows, Saka knows. I don't actually know how to do anything. When I try and help. When there's an emergency, other than casting the this is what we need to do and XYZ to push all the buttons, I couldn't do it right. So I think there's a dynamic of allowing someone's creativity to flow, which as an operator, operations, we all kill that. Perry Belcher says it to me all the time. So does Kassam. Visionaries I've worked with in the past, Stephen, Georgi, Mario, they've all said to me, like, hey, let creativity flow. Like, don't knock it before we've even hit, like, let creativity flow. And so I think as operators, we want to kill anything that that isn't gonna fit right away instead of letting it come to fruition and be born and then we can poke at it. And that's when I think the heavy thinking needs to come into play, because I believe that I create more fires for you than I put out for you. Probably. As the person who's the right side of me, you're like, Richard's like my left marketing, strategic analytic hand. And you're like my right operations, logistics, common sense hand. And so without those two things, I'd be pretty screwed. And I think a lot of people don't have those two things. And. And that's why. So talk to me about, like, when I give you like, we did the scale audit, me, Richard and Saka all met in person in London, and we built this entire funnel and we came back with what we thought was like, well thought out. And you had like 90 valid questions because you slowed down enough. So talk to me about when you're looking at a plan or a path forward from a visionary, what you're doing to make them stop and think about all the outcomes that is about to happen or the consequences.

[B]

Okay, so the first part is actually hearing and listening. So if you give me that resource, for example, is making myself time to dive in and analyze what's about and what's the goal? What's the purpose behind these? What are we trying to achieve? It's pretty blunt, like, why? What for?

[A]

It's not understood. Yeah.

[B]

And I think those short questions as well as at times not a question, but say no, even just to like trigger the other person. Not because we're not going to do it, you know, but visionary entrepreneurs can really help someone telling them no at times. So I'm only to ask why? What's the purpose? And then going to analyze what, what we set in place. And usually what happens then is that a lot of the things that we put in place that the visionary created, for example, or the marketer created, a, maybe they don't serve the purpose directly. It's just like legacy kind of framework structures something that is being dragged from a separate project. Or B, it's actually causing a lot of problems operationally, which in the end is going to end up putting the whole purpose of these, let's say funnel at risk.

[A]

Yo, we interrupt this pod to tell you like and subscribe. What are you doing? Why haven't you liked? Why haven't you subscribed? Just subscribe. What's the problem? In all seriousness, subscribe so that you get notifications every time we drop new content. Additionally, if you have not signed up for our visionary vault, what the hell? Www.specialopspodcast.com Go sign up. It's free. We never try and sell you and we're putting all kinds of stuff in there to help you with the operations of your business because we're passionate about it and we want to share operational excellence with our direct response, e commerce and online selling family. Well, when you put a funnel at risk and it doesn't work or it causes a lot of chaos on the back end of it, you absolutely kill your team morale. No one's excited about a broken anything, no matter how much quantity you have coming in. So talk to me about that. Let's go through. We've done this many, many times at Shockwave where we are handed things that were not thought out. We've got a million pieces on the floor and we gotta pick them up. Talk to me about what is the framework you use when you're looking at something to get it all identified and then fix it through deep thinking.

[B]

So I'm very visual like that. Even if I don't get to map it in middle or any sort of whiteboard. I need to take that drone view of the whole process and map it out in my head. So what resources are being demanded, at what times, how much clarity or confusion is being put into the systems. And basically operations is economics. So we have limited resources. I think that again, visionary. I love them. They are prolific in the sense that they don't have certain boundaries and limitations that I have, for example. Right. As an operator. That's why we work very good together. So again, map the whole process out. Think about the implications that these funnel these new operation has to the rest of the operations and identify what's waste, what's noise, what's actually can be trimmed down. So if it's not needed because there's.

[A]

A lot of noise and a lot of the stuff, we get a lot.

[B]

A lot of waste. Yeah. And noise.

[A]

Talk to me about that.

[B]

Man, I hate noise.

[A]

I know you do.

[B]

I hate it.

[A]

I'm noise.

[B]

You can be. Yeah, you certainly can be. Yeah. But again, it's, it's those things that are yin and yang, you know, I won't express that.

[A]

No, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We get along really well.

[B]

I need noises at the same time.

[A]

I need someone to tell me to stop giving me noise. Yeah, Works well together.

[B]

Noise is processing power, let's call it like that. So it can be one context switching. So hey, every new thing you add, every new process that you add into the systems and I'm thinking about the whole business systems like human factors included, that's noise added. And every time you have to change from one process to the other, that takes a certain amount of processing power. And even worse, if you've got to keep that process on the background, just when you open, like the task administrator in your computer, like you're going to see all the processes that are running on the background and that's taking processing power. And if you stress the processor enough, you're going to cause issues, fires. And that's just like snowballing from there, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So for noise, the simplest part is just looking at the noise like from the apps. Slack, look at Slack, look at the Google Drive, look at ClickUp, look at your inbox. That's the first place where noise is going to hit you right in the face. It's going to get everything sparse out. I think that's the first place. And I think about that both for the internal side of the operations, for the company, for the humans, like making the, the machine work, and I think about noise for the customer on the client at the same time.

[A]

Brilliant. I like to give a couple of actionable things that I think is super helpful. The first thing is I would recommend, and I wish I would have brought it with me, I would highly recommend reading the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. I don't know if you've ever read it, but to our listeners, like, absolutely. Take a moment and read this, Read this book. And I think there's a place for visionaries. I think that there's a place for operators to do this. I was introduced to the concept of deep work probably about nine years ago. Ish. And the person who introduced me to it, I remember saying to him like, I'm an operator. I the whole premise is to shut everything off, shut all the noise off. Your Internet, your phone, everything. And whether it be for a week because you're writing a book or it be two hours twice a week because you're running a company, find what you need to do and shut it all out. And I remember being like, I'm an operator. Do you know how many times we've gotten this text? Hey, unless you say no in the next hour, I'm going to insert awful thing that I'm gonna have to deal with for the next month of my life here, Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I can't shut things off.

[B]

Right.

[A]

When I learn to quiet everything, I and I don't do it well. It's still a work in progress. But once I learned to do that, I realized all of the pieces that were on the floor that I was leaving that really, if you're going to talk about operational excellence, shouldn't be left there. And so I think reading that book and then assigning yourself deep work time, if you're a visionary entrepreneur, you may do that, you know, once a month for two days so that you can look at everything in your business and, and just shut out all the noise around you and just focus on that. If you're an author, you may do it, you know, for a week or two so you can write a book. If you're a content creator, you might do it two hours a day. For me, my sweet spot is two to three two hour blocks per week. And then I believe we decided it was once a quarter order with the team. I think we decided to do it once a month because it's just as we're going. It's not, it's not enough anymore. And so I would highly recommend opening up your calendar and putting some deep work time into your calendar so you can do deep, deep, deep dives and deep thinking. Read the book by Cal Newport, Deep Work. And then also grab Tiago's how to Slow down and Reduce Noise. He wrote an ebook. It's in our visionary Vault Again, special opspodcast.com. you can go over there and sign up our visionary vault for free. Any last minute parting words?

[B]

Yes, I think identify your triggers as well. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, there's certain Triggers that are going to get a visionary entrepreneur into just high speed immediately.

[A]

What's mine?

[B]

I. I gotta think about what's yours. You think it's only one.

[A]

I think I have. I think I have three.

[B]

I'll hear you.

[A]

No, I want to hear yours. I want to hear if you know, what are my triggers to get me to stop and think.

[B]

Not of the top of my head. No.

[A]

The first one is, I would have guessed that you knew this and you pull those levers intentionally. The first one is someone coming to me and letting me know one of my staff members is in some type of negative situation. Whether it be they might leave because they're overworked or the quality of work is dropping, or they seem stressed or. Or, hey, I think something's going on. That's my first trigger. I'll stop everything. The second one, and this usually comes from Initia, our controller, where I'll stop to look at everything. Hey. Profit is down. It's lower than what our goals are.

[B]

I have one.

[A]

Oh, there we go.

[B]

Quality. That is not up to par to what we have as a standard. That immediately triggers you off. You need to change that. This second.

[A]

Yep. That was going to be my third one. Anything that makes me look bad, whether a staff person put it out or I put it out. Anything that makes the company look less than excellence. I'd go so far as, say, perfection sloppy. Infuriates me. Everything stops. That's my number one. Everything. There's a. There's a button that is in my office that is not real. But it is. And when I push that button, everything stops. And we are all going to focus on this because this makes us look poorly to the world. Those. Those are my three.

[B]

Yeah. So I think it's identify it just so you can default to putting. Even if it's a 10 minute buffer, we just say pause, like 10 minutes. Change it. Yeah.

[A]

Pause for 10 minutes.

[B]

Put a buffer. Yeah.

[A]

Love it. Anything else?

[B]

No, that's it.

[A]

I'm so excited to read your ebook. I actually have it on my phone right there. You just sent it to me. I'm super excited to read it, visit our visionary vault and see all the things that our team made for you guys. Tiago put a lot of time into a lot of the stuff that's in there. So did Richard, so did I, so did Ryan Poteet. Like many people have contributed to that. So make sure you sign up and see you on another episode.