When to speed up for the light

Driving into Tabuk on an empty road at night, you can see the junction from a long way off. The light is green, and it has been green for a while. Everyone who drives knows what that means. It is about to change.

On a real road the answer is easy. Ease off. Coast. Let the car slow itself and stop calmly if the light turns. You lose a minute and nobody gets hurt.

Other green lights work the other way.

A neighbourhood starts ordering everything by message, and the corner shop that answers first becomes the shop people remember. A new kind of customer turns up asking for something nobody stocks yet. A habit in the market is loosening, and you can feel that it will not stay loose for long.

These lights also go red. The window closes, someone else walks through it, and the new way becomes simply the way things are. The careful instinct, the one that serves us so well at the junction, says wait, watch, slow down.

Here the careful instinct is the costly one. Effort made while the window is open does not just win a little. It builds on itself, week after week, and the people it serves keep coming back to whoever showed up first. The same effort made after the window has closed is mostly wasted.

So the question is not whether to hurry. It is which kind of light you are looking at. On the road, slow down. When the world is moving, go.