The last time I did my quarterly retreat (check out Blog post #2 to learn more on those), I checked in on the things in my life I was working on, as is an integral part of that day. Usually I ask myself whether or not I have been really doing what I set out to do, and if not, does that mean it doesn’t matter much to me anymore and should I switch course? This time, rather than reflecting on what I was spending my time on, I found myself considering how I was doing things. If feeling uninspired or underwhelmed or on autopilot, could I mix up the how rather than the what?
I kept coming back to one particular dimension of the how: speed. Would some things serve me better if I slowed them down? And, on the flip side, could some things be more impactful if I speeded them up?
The slow down. In my blog post #11 I reflected on savor-watching tv, and other ways we can savor more things in our life as a joy booster. For years and years, maybe decades, I have been working – with varying degrees of success – to eat more slowly. I love to eat and I really try to savor, but by nature I am a fast eater. I know that when I do slow down, the same amount of food leads to many more minutes of enjoyment. This one was not a new idea, but I felt invigorated to redouble my efforts.
Another is handwriting. Anyone who knows me well enough to have seen my handwriting (sorry, students!) knows it is horrible, but what most people don’t’ realize is that I actually have extremely legible, dare I even say pretty, handwriting if I just slow down a tiny bit and stay there. The whole point of writing something is for someone to be able to read it – writing so messy that even I have no idea what I was trying to say serves exactly no purpose.
I have really been enjoying using the Five Senses Journal by Gretchen Rubin, prompting me each day to think about a way that I enjoyed each of my major five senses (taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch). This practice has brought a lot of everyday joy, but by slowing down to fully experience each of these senses in the moment rather than just in retrospect multiplies the effect.
Finally, I just finished reading Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. I have been thinking about his ideas since reading his book Deep Work; Slow Productivity elaborates on and fleshes out some of the principles of the earlier book even more. Newport argues for how rare truly undistracted, deep-thinking knowledge work has become and how important it is. As a researcher and teacher, to truly make a difference with what I do I have focus and dive deeper into sometimes complex ideas. That requires slowing down.
What about faster? I love to move – mostly dancing and walking – and I try to move a lot every day. But sometimes I know I am just going through the motions to get my steps in (12K a day is my goal). Not all steps are created equal, though, and I know if I just speeded up my pace for even part of a walk, or put more oomph into my dance workouts, the benefits to my health, mood, and confidence would skyrocket.
Thinking more about dancing, I realized maybe speed isn’t exactly what I meant – the music has a certain beat and I wasn’t speeding that up – it is more a matter of intensity. Sometimes I catch myself just kind of going through the motions rather that really putting my all into it. I use the app Body Groove, and the teacher once said, “if you’re going to dance, you might as well dance.” Perhaps it’s no coincidence that intensity and intentionality share a common root? Paying attention to my intensity of movement is helping to foster a level of intentionality in my movement.
This last idea is going to sound like a direct contradiction to what I was just saying about slow productivity, but hear me out. Another book that really resonated with me over the last couple of years is Effortless by Greg McKeown. He wrote it as a follow-up to his popular book Essentialism after realizing he was not fully able to live by his own ideas of paring life down to the most important priorities when his daughter became ill and everything he needed to do became priorities.
The idea that stuck with me most in Effortless (besides pairing drudgery with fun, but that sounds like a whole other post) is asking yourself “what would this look like if it were easy?” A pre-question to this I try to ask myself is “am I making this harder than it has to be?” Just as there are a lot of things we really should slow down with and do more carefully, there are others that just are not all that consequential that sometimes bog us down. Second guessing ourselves about minor decisions or overthinking how to approach minor tasks in our work and home lives are common among a lot of us. Asking these questions, figuring out ways to make things easier – and often much faster – leaves us more time to slow down where it counts.