Living slow
We’ve come to the conclusion that sliced bread is the single greatest adaptation by which all other inventions are to be judged. But what about the sense of achievement that comes from unpacking a loaf of bread, choosing an appropriate knife, and slicing your bread into the width of your choosing?
Frantically checking social media, running from one activity to the next – we exhaust ourselves to maintain a hectic lifestyle. Nearly 97% of Americans own a microwave. In 2018, Instant Pot broke its own previous Prime Day record with 300,000 units sold in 36 hours. The success of this kitchen appliance would probably be a different story if it was the “Slowpot.” Consider the tagline: “Cook your favorite Crockpot meals in twice the time it normally takes you!”
Now, I understand that slicing a loaf of bread hardly serves a purpose. Thanks to modern civilization, many of these mindless tasks have been removed to make better use of our time. But much of life is meant to be experienced, rather than marginalized as an activity to be outsourced.
Fast appliances, fast cars, fast people – we celebrate speed and condemn the slow.
What if the outcome of Aesop’s classic, the tortoise and the hair, were reversed? Just another slow member of society outpaced by a faster counterpart.
Instead, we celebrate the story’s outcome because it illustrates a methodical stick to-itivness synonymous with commitment.
Commitment? Yes. Methodical? Sure. But slow?
Our response to slowness is quite the opposite. We respect commitment and we can appreciate a methodical approach. But slowness? That’s boring and inconvenient.
Children aren’t celebrated for being the slowest on the playground. The idea is hilarious, counter-intuitive to the American lifestyle of hurry up and...wait.
Slow is associated with stupidity, lethargicness, or even laziness. We don’t crowd around the television to watch athletes meander around the track. US highways even have a fast-lane for those who need to get where they’re going faster than the rest of us. An unobstructed path for those whose time is of greater priority than those driving in the slow lane who’ve apparently discovered an untapped well of time they draw from.
Our natural pace is fast, ingrained from an early age. Children and adults alike idolize fast people and fast cars. We graduate from fast toys to fast software.
“I bet you I can run slower than you,” said no child ever! No one wants to be left behind. If you move faster, you get more done. You get more done, you move ahead.
If we’re going to fail, we’re encouraged to fail fast. The mentality of young companies is to adapt, iterate, and pivot as quickly as possible on the way to developing the latest widget.
But let’s stop, catch our breath, and consider for a moment: could there possibly be any benefit to moving slower?
Great things don’t happen overnight. Apparently the Roman Empire took some time to build, right? But what about more modern examples?
You could say the bag-free Dyson vacuum cleaner required a few late nights to develop. In fact, Sir James Dyson’s creative process could be defined as the antithesis of slow, methodical work. The first successful DCO1 model took 15 years and 5,127 prototypes before it proved successful in 1993.
15 years in the world of product development is not fast. 5,127 iterations of a single concept is deliberate, intentional, and methodical.
A methodical person is defined as someone who pays very careful attention to detail and who does things in a precise manner or following a procedure. A person who slowly and carefully reads all directions and then follows them exactly is someone who would be described as methodical.
Someone posted the question to Quora, “What is it like to be a methodical person?” The most upvoted response begins with, “It makes [it so] you can do and capture so much more, anticipate things before they go wrong, and avoid the annoyance of always being in “last moment fixing” mode.”
Speed is of secondary importance in a methodical process. To be methodical is to do something according to a systematic or established form of procedure.
Thomas Edison, known for his infamous quote, "I haven't failed – I've just found 10,000 that won't work" purportedly developed several thousands of experiments on his way to creating the lightbulb. The exact number of attempts it took to develop the light bulb is unknown. But we do know that his battery experiments involved over 10,000 attempts using different chemicals and materials to develop the alkaline storage battery.
Moving slowly won’t get you to Point B as quickly as it would with expediency. But at the same time, it will probably yield a better result once you’ve reached your final destination.
If speed is your only measure of success, then sure, slow, methodical progress isn’t the best recourse. But with the exception of a race, speed is rarely a predictor of success.
The assumption that we need to be fast is void of focused, deliberate, intentional effort. Success comes from knowing what to avoid, what to say “no” to in effect. When you’re focused, speed becomes less of an issue.
Perhaps one of the most well-known examples of a methodical work process is Albert Einstein. His discoveries were never the result of hurried work. His daily work routine made room for regular breaks to play the violin.
They became an integral part of his creative process. Beyond music, he also advocated “combination play” in which he practiced unrelated disciplines (art, ideas, music, thoughts), and blended them together to come up with new ideas. This unorthodox strategy led to the discovery of his most famous equation, E=mc2.
We can’t force “aha” moments. In fact, they rarely happen. Rather, these moments of ingenious flash are the result of long, deliberate moments of contemplation.
Beethoven maintained his creativity through long, solitary walks through the forested valleys of Vienna after lunch. His daily stroll wasn’t an act of physical exercise as you might assume. Rather than burning a few calories, these walks were intended to induce creative thinking. He carried a pencil and paper in his pocket to record any musical thoughts.
We hear speakers, authors, self-help gurus, and coaches talk about practicing mindfulness or being in the moment. But no matter how disciplined, stillness is a difficult concept to execute. We are restless people by nature. Forcing yourself to slow down isn’t easy.
But hang with me for a moment; take a deep breath and set down your coffee – let’s contemplate a few benefits of living slow.
Maybe later we can talk about how you can develop mindfulness in order to start living a slow lifestyle. But for now, let’s discuss its benefits as a way of convincing you it’s truly the best way to live.
Benefits of living slow
It allows you to savor each moment
I’ll admit: I have to force myself to embrace the process. I have a terrible habit of barreling through the between in order to reach the end. I appreciate finality and struggle to cherish the journey it takes to get there.
However, enjoying the process – the in-between time it takes to get from point A to point B — allows you to savor the moment. Every July 4th as the US celebrates its independence, competitors from around the world gather on Coney Island to consume as many hot dogs in 10 minutes in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Joey Chestnut has been the reigning champion for 12 of the past 13 years. In 2019 he consumed 71 hot dogs to win the belt.
Now, compare the hot dog eating contest to the patron enjoying a steak dinner. Rather than a stage in front of a noisy crowd, the customer sits in a quiet booth, intentionally savoring each bite.
Slow is a shifted mindset. It embraces the process, the experience itself, rather than seeing it as something you must endure before you reach the end.
Slow Food, an organization founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini in Italy, has become a worldwide movement. They promote local food and traditional cooking. According to their website, “Slow Food works around the world to protect food biodiversity, build links between producers and consumers, and raise awareness of some of the most pressing topics affecting our food system.”
Created as an alternative to fast food, Slow Food works to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and encourages farming supporting the local ecosystem. The organization was the first established part of the broader Slow Movement that promotes a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace.
This organization compels us to slow down and experience life. Instead of how much and how fast we can consume, it encourages you to savor the experience at hand.
The pace at which we live not only impacts how we eat, it directly impacts our health. Not to pick on the United States, but we can all agree we’re prone to overeating. It’s the result of how we live: rushing here, rushing there. It impacts the way we work, the way we think, and of course, the way we eat. We rush to eat so we can get to the next event on our agenda. In a matter of a couple of minutes, we’ve consumed our entire meal.
All the while, our brain hasn’t even had a chance to catch up. The average person consumes his or her lunch in 7 to 10 minutes. However, it takes your body twice that long to realize it’s full. Our brain’s satiety response doesn’t kick in until 20 minutes after we’ve begun eating.
It is safer
Not that safety is should be our main prerogative, but slow is rarely associated with danger. Driving too fast can lead to car accidents and working too fast leads to mistakes. But have you ever seen a snail crash or heard of a sloth entangled with another sloth because they were climbing through the same tree too quickly?
I’m not suggesting we adopt a snail’s pace – civilization might come to a stop if we did – but a slowing down prevents mistakes and allows you to see the obstacles in your way to prevent the proverbial wrecks of life.
It allows you to enjoy the process
Small children have a knack for forcing their adult counterparts to slow down. Before they’ve reached the age when they realize the rest of the world moves at a faster pace, they are great at pacing themselves. They eat slower, get dressed slower, and experience life a fraction of the rate we do.
But at the same time, they seem to enjoy the process more. The duration is more of a marathon than a sprint when my four-year-old daughter sits down for dinner. In the time she finishes eating, I’ve had seconds and even begun cleaning up.
While I shovel food into my mouth, she takes the time to contemplate questions such as whether she’ll get dessert, what’s for dessert, and any number of inquiries that arise in her mind. She’ll tell us about her day and talk to her baby brother among several other things we often tell her to stop doing so she can be excused from the table.
Left to her own devices, the simple act of getting dressed in the morning can lead her to discover a lost toy or identify a baby bunny in the backyard she’s spied from her bedroom window.
Slowing down prevents life from becoming one continuous strand of events.
It allows you to observe the details
You see things you might otherwise overlook when moving quickly. Have you ever noticed how many more things you see along the way when you walk down the sidewalk as opposed to driving down the road?
The moments of life become a blur of historical events when we don’t slow our momentum.
It allows you to focus
In his book, The Mindful Athlete, George Mumford suggests the reason athletes succumb to the “yips,” the loss of fine motor skills, is because of misplaced focus. For whatever reason, they begin focusing on the wrong thing.
Remember growing up when your parents would remind you to “think twice?” It was a call to stop, reconsider, and deliberately focus on the current situation. The statement served to safeguard against needless mistakes and downfalls. Thinking slowly allows you to think critically.
Rushing through life, mindlessly falling prey to life’s events, leads to a misplaced focus. Instead of being in the moment, you might skip to the next step and fail in the current one. Deliberate contemplation prevents you from rushing through the experience. It allows you to take charge of it rather than become an observing passenger.
Half-developed notions are the result of lazy, hurried thinking. Sometimes it’s the result of not thinking at all. We’ve all been guilty of rushing through life without giving thought to our actions. Taking the time to decelerate allows for further contemplation.
Have you ever tried to read the license plate of a car speeding by at 75 mph? It’s just a blur. It’s difficult to focus on a moving target. Neither your mind nor your eyes have a chance to focus.
Slowing down removes the blur that prevents you from being able to focus.
A slow conclusion
So hurry up and slow down already. Actually, on second thought...take your time considering the idea of slowing down.