TonsofTime - Enjoy the now

In Praise of Slow is an elegy to the art of joyfull slow living and claims that there is a growing ‘Slow’ movement. In this age of great speed, distraction and mulitasking, it is refreshing to see that a growing number of people value the quality of a slow, but attentive life. The book’s author, Carl Honoré, delivers many examples where slow is better and as contradictory as this may appear, very often slow is faster. Chapters are devoted to different areas of life, such as cooking, city planning, psychology, medicine, (tantric) sex, work, leisure and children. Carl showes that the industrialisation and urbanisation in the west has caused the economy to run round the clock and that we do not seem to have enough time for all the things that claim our attention. Our market-driven world urges us to total efficiency, even to the point where we try to ‘organise’ the time with our spouse and children. The remedy against this rat-race is simple: Do everything slower! If you start with taking the right amount of time for everything, you can appreciate things and enjoy the richness of the moment more. If you go out to eat for instance, you can have a splendid evening if you savor every course with full attention while you take time to get to know your company better and enjoy the conversation. When you are allways in a hurry, you enjoy the now less.

Slower can mean faster

Slow can also produce faster results, however contradictory this may seem. When for instance you are writing a report and relax and take as much time as you need, you will find that because of the ‘no hurry, no worry’ attitude, creativity is boosted. You will find it easier to devote your full attention to your task. Anxiety and fear are reduced, because there is no time pressure. When fear is less, expression and creativity is more, and so is the quality of your output. An atmosphere arises in which you can be more productive. Often, people can create far better results in these conditions. But remarkably, they also can produce more in less time, because, during an afternoon of relaxed and focused work, knowledge workers can cover a lot more ground than distracted, fearfull and hasty people working the same amount of time.

I think the key-words for the success of the Slow movement are focus and attention. The tortoise knows more about the road than the hare. If you do not live with a constant time pressure (and this means taking up less commitments and appointments) and take a more laid-back and relaxed attitude to daily existence, not only the risk of getting exhausted is diminished, but you notice more of the colorfull details of ‘ordinary’ things and events and can understand and appreciate them more at a deeper level. A hurried life is a shallow life.

Carl Honoré has done a great job in showing us the advantages of the ’slow’ approach, worth reading.