The superpower of slowness

In a world addicted to speed, slowness is a superpower

🏷️ Categories: Time management, Deliberate practice

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Look around you and tell me if you see it too.

We are immersed in a culture that glorifies speed, everything must happen in a "now". In this frenetic world we eat fast, we look for a partner by swiping through Tinder and, if the connection is not instantaneous, we discard it as waste. We want to lose weight in the blink of an eye and we forget that the real change is in lifestyle and not going hungry for a few months in the summer.

We seek immediacy, but what is valuable requires time and above all, patience.

Speed ​​is confused with efficiency and success, while slowness is perceived as a burden, a weakness. We have let ourselves be carried away by a current that forces our natural rhythms, we live in a permanent struggle against time.

We live at full speed for no apparent reason.

Speed ​​takes its toll in the end.

Friendships and love relationships fade into superficiality as we share less and less quality time, moments with our children that are not even enjoyed due to work stress… We are losing ourselves in a sea of ​​burnout and exhaustion (Reisch, 2001; Nowotny, 2018).

I call it “the Amazon Prime era”, an era in which immediacy has become a necessity. We are so impatient that there are those who are willing to pay more just to have their order delivered to their home. This contrasts greatly with my father's life just 50 years ago. In his youth, buying something meant “spending money for many months”; you had to wait.

Now impatience is an epidemic: a delayed order generates despair and a late response on WhatsApp causes anxiety.

We want it all and we want it now.

Faced with this cult of speed, there is an alternative to live better day to day.

Slowness.

This does not mean doing everything slower, but rather changing the way we see speed. The current of speed drags us along and has made us forget that there are things whose beauty lies in enjoying them until we lose track of the passage of time. I am talking about family, partner, friends, passions, self-care... (Reisch, 2001; Lamb, 2019).

Life without time to spend in these moments is neither life nor has value.

I have always thought that our most valuable resource is time, and in order to spend it where it matters, we must first save it. Where to save it from? I think that many people are confused here: there are those who see productivity as a way of working more, setting more tasks, more goals and in the end ending up running like a hamster on a wheel.

I thought this way until my body could not take it anymore and I had to stop.

I realized that the pace I was going was not sustainable and my goals became my demons, but I learned my lesson. That's the change of mentality towards speed that I was telling you about.

I no longer want to be more productive by doing more and more things, but to do the same things in less time and spend the rest of the time on what fills my soul.

I no longer want to run like a madman to reach the goal, but to find the shortest path to walk. That's the difference.

The 3 keys to slow productivity

1. Do less

Multitasking is simply a myth. The more things you try to do, the worse your information processing becomes and the less progress you make (Foerde et al., 2006).

Since performance is found when we focus on one thing, reduce your number of daily tasks, do without what you can, and delegate what is possible. Not everything has to go through your hands. So, instead of having to keep track of a thousand things and not getting any of them right, you will focus and move forward (Newport, 2024).

I learned this by making mistakes.

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

2. Walk at a natural pace

Productivity has always been seasonal, literally.

For most of history, work was tied to farming, fishing, ranching, and other seasonal jobs. Working without changes of pace is something that became widespread after the industrial revolution, since factories do not depend on whether it is spring or fall (Newport, 2024).

Your creativity and energy fluctuate, you are not a machine and your days are not all the same.

If you are the type of person who pushes yourself too hard, Newport recommends this technique: Every time you add a task to your calendar, set aside an equal amount of time for that day or the next few days. If you schedule 30 minutes for a call on Tuesday, find another 30 minutes on your calendar for yourself. As a day starts to fill up with tasks, it also fills up with protected blocks of time, making it increasingly difficult to add something new and maintain a balance between responsibilities and free time.

I apply something similar: the more I write, the more rest I get afterwards.

At first I had a set writing schedule, now I have weekly milestones. I realized that I had extremely prolific days where I wrote for hours and others where I barely made progress. It is crucial to have habits, but you should be flexible too.

Now I fluctuate, some days I write tirelessly and others are calm and rambling.

3. Quality over quantity

Elevate the pursuit of excellence over empty productivity.

Just because you've done more things doesn't mean you've contributed more value. Anyone could do a lot of mediocre work, but very few could do excellent work. This is again the mindset shift towards speed. Sure, I could write a letter every day, but obviously the quality wouldn't be anywhere near the same.

Give yourself time to produce something great, but not unlimited time.

Focus on creating something good enough for your work to shine, but free yourself from the need to forge a masterpiece. Excellence is possible, perfection unattainable (Newport, 2024).

I emphasize this.

I don't want to be the one who runs the fastest to reach the goal, I want to know the shortest path to get there on foot, because there are many goals and sprints run out.

✍️ It's your turn: Do you feel like your pace doesn't allow you to enjoy or rest?

💭 Quote of the day x3: All from “5 Centimeters Per Second” by Makoto Shinkai.

• «In recent years, I've wanted to move forward, I've wanted to grab hold of something I couldn't reach. What was that? I have no idea.»

• «Not knowing where those obsessive thoughts came from, I simply drowned in my work.»

• «At what speed must I live so I can see you again?»

See you, take care ♥️.

📚 References

1. Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 103(31), 11778-11783. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0602659103

2. Honoré, C. (2005). In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed.

3. Lamb, D. (2019). Taking it day-by-day: an exploratory study of adult perspectives on slow living in an urban setting. Annals Of Leisure Research., 22(4), 463-483. https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2019.1609366

4. Newport, C. (2024). Slow productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Random House.

5. Nowotny, H. (2018). Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience. John Wiley & Sons.

6. Reisch, L. A. (2001). Time and Wealth. Time & Society, 10(2-3), 367-385. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463x01010002012