Haste makes Waste
Haste makes waste is a phrase that means that rushing too quickly often results to mistakes that can be very costly. The phrase expresses the ideology that making rash decisions makes an individual or organization to actually fall behind compared to those who took their time to think through an issue before acting. In addition, the phrase has two main ideas, ‘haste’, which means moving too quickly, and ‘waste’, which relates to unintended outcome. The phrase has also been used to describe several situations. For instance, people should not hurry too much to complete their projects since taking time and moving carefully tends to predict stumbling blocks and thus avoid setbacks. Additionally, avoiding haste enables people to desist from cutting corners and thus attain better results at the end. When resources are used in a careful and consistent manner, very few mistakes will occur thus leading to less wastage.
The main tenets of the proverb are that hasty or rash decisions lead to loss of numerous things, including time, opportunities, resources, ideas, and the project that a person was working on. The proverb can be expanded to give an expression of how decisions that are made on a daily basis can fail to prosper if enough time is not taken to think through the idea. To start with, making shortcuts at school, home, or job usually leads to wastage of huge amounts of resources and time. For instance, a student who fails to follow the direction of his teacher and decides to use a shortcut usually ends up failing in his exams. Conversely, an employee who rushes through a project without following through the set guidelines may fail to predict any setbacks that may arise thus leading to project failure. Lastly, at home, a haste decision can lead to injury which may lead to costly hospital treatment.
Studies have revealed that taking time to study over a certain issue leads to a more productive and enjoyable time since the end result usually tends to be more successful. The proverb advices people to avoid hasty decisions which may lead to cost overruns especially when a certain section of a project has to be redone all over again. This is because skipping a certain part may lead to overspending or wasteful utilization of resources. Experts argue that in the long run, avoiding haste usually saves huge amount of time since there will be less risks of having to correct the mistakes that were overlooked. Most real life projects have often been exposed to cost overruns since the project managers did not take enough time to estimate the risks that may take place in case any stumbling block are experienced before the completion of the project.
This proverb is also striking in terms of the way it uses rhyme in using the two main words to describe its meaning and thus makes it more memorable. Furthermore, the use of rhyme increases the significance of the phrase which can be broken down into a number of principles which it tries to address. These principles include reminding people to give more attention to the work they are doing. Others include safety and health, appreciating time, forward planning, saving money, utilizing resources, predicting overruns, minimizing costs, and enhancing efficiency. Basically, this phrase is a proverbial way of advising people that whatever they are doing can only be effective and successful when enough time is taken before making the final decision. When valuable resources are placed under careful consideration, the end project will often turn out as accepted and this will make project coordinators to appreciate the hard work.
