Your Best in Warp Speed analogy

In a similar vein, when you drive anywhere in your vehicle you don't keep your engine at the red line at all times. You would wear it out within 20,000 miles at best. In fact, the engine almost always tries to be at the lowest rpm feasible.
We should strive to be like our vehicles: operating at the lowest load possible, hustling only when necessary.

Right. That speedometer goes all the way to 270 km/h but on average we drive at about 30km/h in a city. That's why our cars can last 400000 km while a Formula 1's engine last about one race.
- Your analogy is a lot worse than the one from the guy you replied to. Formula1 engines last multiple races since each car is only allowed 3 engines per season. And the reason they last so short is cause they are running at insane amounts of compression and rpm, not because of the speed the cars are driving.
  A Formula 1 car doing 30kmh in stop and go city traffic would break down after a lot shorter distance than a road going sports car doing a constant 300kmh on the Autobahn

The other reason for traveling at Warp 5 is that the Enterprise is an explorer ship. If you never slow down you'll "make good time" but miss the Universe's Biggest Ball of String. Working at 100% can make you miss nuances that could be important, or could just add some ineffable element to your inner life.

There's also that one episode where it comes out that fast warp travel damages the universe and they need to be slower than a certain warp to not damage it. But in good old TNG fashion this is never referenced again in the future.
- They don’t directly mention it, but as I recall after that episode traveling at high warp speeds was greatly diminished and warp speeds above certain thresholds were only used in emergency situations/required special authorization. So not completely abandoned but they certainly didn’t build on the premise, which is a shame because I thought it was one of the cooler plot elements that was introduced in the series.
- As I recall it was vaguely mentioned (in a different series) that newer warp engines didn't cause the same damage at high warp speeds.
- I think any warp travel at all was damaging, and lowering warp speeds was the compromise to slow down the damage they were doing but did not completely eliminate it

Warp 5? That's really slow.

I'd say their common travel speed is more like warp 7.

Guess it's time for another entire rewatch of TNG to check the stats.

Warp 8 was the most common warp factor used for general travel on TNG. Warp 9.2 was actually the maximum sustainable cruising speed of a Galaxy class ship. This was played for a laugh in Menage a Troi when Picard called for Warp 9 when returning Lwaxana to Betazed at the end of the episode.

This is also why I can't respond 'good' to how I am. If I am 'good' then it means I'm better than average or median. But if I say I am good too often, it becomes the average.

My husband always says he's normal when asked. It took some time to get used to not hearing "good". Our toddler now also replies with she's normal.
- Teaching the youngling how to voice emotions and sometimes you just need a society break will set that kid up far better than the usual education systems we have.
I consider "good" to be of the binary group good or not good.
Average is good, a little low is good. Great is good
Though I usually answer "fine :)"

And sometime you might need to crawl. And sometime you might need someone to carry you.

Well, the ship analogy doesn't really hold up. If we draw a parallel with existing maritime ships, they can sustain their rated top speed when necessary. However, this is rarely done primarily due to fuel efficiency. Since there are diminishing returns to pushing speed, it’s only done under serious time constraints.

"the ship analogy doesn't really hold up ... if you consider the ships to be a completely unrelated kind of ships ... except here's how it would still hold up anyway"
- Warp speeds were clearly modeled to mimick knots. And I'm sure that the lore reason for them not traveling at Enterprise's top speed all the time is again fuel efficiency and not because it would "blow up" (although 9.9 might be above its rated top speed, I don't remember). So it doesn't hold up with people, where you can just eat more and perform at your best all the time, we have additional emotional constraints that don't apply to equipment.
  Other than all that... perfect analogy.
Ships have a max speed due to drag from water and other complicated physics stuff involving hydrodynamics.
Modern ships are far more maneuverable and able to reach their top speed faster than they used to, even when carrying more mass. That is because their engines are more powerful and we maxed out 'enough for top speed for naval vessels' a long time ago.
- I know why ships have max speed, I have a bachelor's degree in maritime navigation.
  But also, I honestly don't see how this comment is relevant to the subject. Yes, modern ships are faster than older ships. But they still usually run at half speed or less.

But isn't strange reptile sex stuff happening at those speeds? What's the analogy?

That happens when you break the Warp 10 threshold (in normal space, doesn't happen if you're in a transwarp corridor).

As someone with ADD I experience the flip of this. I'm stuck in a world that is not used to running at 200% which is where I operate. It's been a lot of work but consciously slowing down because I need to understand people normally burn out if running over 100%.

It's a struggle. As an ex once explained using a garden analogy. I am over watering the garden because it's all I know but I need to understand not all gardens need heavy watering.

So yeah, ADD sucks. I want to stay at warp 9.9 but the rest of the world can't handle it.