I love it when I can refine and improve, especially when it enables me to become a better teacher since that enables others to refine and improve. Such a joyous cycle of betterment. 🙂

I often talk about how to “go faster without going faster“. It’s built upon concepts like performing simultaneous actions, being able to “change gears”, efficiency and economy of motion, and so on.

John Mosby (h/t Greg Ellifritz) makes a great refinement on the point of “going faster”:

The purpose of the snap drill is genuinely not about shooting “faster.” In the real world, shooting faster actually tends to have rather deleterious effects, like shooting the wrong fucking person, because you shot before you recognized that it was your 12-year old, and NOT a MS13 gunslinger.

Our goal is to shoot “sooner.” What’s the difference? Shooting sooner is about working the problem correctly, and only making legitimate shots, as soon as possible. That requires more than a fast target acquisition and a quick trigger finger though. It involves knowing and understanding what the parameters are that allow for a legitimate shot, in your circumstances, and then—and ONLY THEN—breaking a FAST, ACCURATE shot. Being able to recognize what is “precise enough,” and then delivering it “fast enough,” wil allow you to shoot sooner, AFTER the decision-making process has allowed you to positively identify your target as a legitimate target.

The time metric just forces you to accept “accurate enough,” instead of pushing for “precision.”

That’s an excellent distinction.

Granted, sometimes discussion has to be about “faster”, but “sooner” is a related concept with overlapping but also unique qualities.

Well-worth understanding the difference, and when each should be called for.