The Acceleration of Slowing Down
Tags: Motivation, Philosophy, Multitasking, Efficiency, Self Improvement

I want to focus on only one thought in this post stemming from this quote from Lao Tzu. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

One of the most difficult things to do in our current world is to slow down. Everything around us is made to seem urgent, that is the way our society has trended for generations now and it seems to be reaching a peak for many people. Whether you are inundated with arbitrary deadlines at work, under constant barrage from social media notifications, distraught from the onslaught of negativity in all forms of media, or just feel a sense of the world coming apart at the seams do not worry, there is a solution, although difficult to achieve. I want to break down the solution in two parts, physical and mental, and provide some things you can start working on today to reduce the flurry in your life on the physical side, as I believe the mental side is best left to the meditation and philosophy parts of this site.

The way I will be using physical in this post is not necessarily something that will require physical exertion. For instance, if your work is all computer based, as mine is, that will fall under this physical part just as much as exercise will. But let’s start with exercise and how the simplest of tasks can really help slow down and regain control of your hectic life. I am referring to walking. It was Nietzsche that said “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking” and making a habit of walking outdoors for just a few minutes as many times a week as possible, will do a wonderful job of breaking the hectic cycle of life. My walks usually last for 20–30 minutes, about four times per week, where my wife, dog, son, and I all go for walk around the neighborhood. Since my son is two, he has an important role of slowing down the pace of the walk and allows me to enjoy the experience more as a relaxing activity, not an exercising one. If you do not have someone in your life to slow you down, make that a focus until you develop the habit of walking slowly. This walk is for your mind just as much as your body, so don’t lose one to help the other.

On a more work focused notes, you need to do away with a lot of modern-day mantras. Let me be clear and single out my objections to a few. I will break them into their own sections:

First, I want to tackle multitasking and how it is a lie and will cost your much more time instead of saving time. Lots of times I see people trying to multitask when they have multiple deadlines approaching and they don’t want to fall behind on any one thing, so they slowly push forward on everything at once. This is a terrible solution as it slows down multiple projects for the illusion of greater progress. It also degrades the work product by not devoting to it all your attention. Instead, I recommend trying the following: laying out what you need to accomplish in a project and then break it down into steps. Make the steps small but not too small that is becomes more cumbersome to track them than to do them. A good benchmark would be to aim for each step to take about one hour. Sometimes it will be more or less and it will be unavoidable and that is fine because you will know this before you start working. Then take each step as its own task and push it to completion and take a brief moment to reflect on the achievement before moving on to the next step. Repeat this process until the project is complete then submit it or file it away for later and you are done with that project completely. This format will allow you to feel achievement the entire way through the process and produce a quality, completed work product.

Second, if you are pursuing advancement in your career goals solely or chiefly for the additional money you will make you should rethink your objectives in life. Chasing money will drain your soul until the day your soul dies, which will be much sooner than when your body dies, and you will be nothing, but a shell of a person left without happiness or fulfillment. Research has shown self-reported happiness does not increase as wealth increases after a certain point, which is around where you can easily meet all your needs and pay all your bills. Chasing dreams of luxury cars, huge houses, expensive clothing and jewelry, and elaborate vacations are not dreams you have created for yourself. These dreams have been created for you by the people who wish to sell you something and enrich themselves. If you find yourself chasing money, try creating your own dreams for your life such as doing what you love and what you are good at for a career so every day is fulfilling regardless of money. Or you can even create altruistic dreams such as being an amazing spouse and parent for your family or volunteering your time to help those less fortunate. These types of goals, that you develop yourself, is what your soul is craving and what will leave you truly happy and fulfilled while leaving the feeling of hurriedness behind.

Finally, think for yourself and don’t put too much weight in expert opinions. This is like my point on creating your own dreams but with a bit of a twist for the environment we all live in today. We have all seen experts give a piece of advice, and then another group of experts will contradict this, only to have the experts switch sides one week later. The only thing that remained consistent is that these experts showed us their true colors and they have their own agendas to follow and they may not line up with yours. So, I ask you, who is the expert on your life (hint: IT’S YOU!).The logic no longer follows that you would make life decisions for yourself based on the opinion of people who are only looking out for themselves. I also want to be clear, it doesn’t matter which side of any argument you believe is right or wrong, what matters is the people making the arguments have largely shown to be corruptible and will say or do the thing that keeps them in a place of authority with those whom they are indebted. Others that are closer to these professions have recently opined on how many professions we thought were noble are instead, held hostage by those who fund them or provide them grant money and that has betrayed us in a difficult time. So this segment comes with a direct call to action: READ, learn for yourself, explore new ideas, keep expanding your mind, and don’t let yourself be corrupted by the news or information that is most convenient to access or listen to because it challenges nothing that you currently believe. To tie it back to the quote that started us off, hurrying how you are informed and learn out of comfort is the worst form of hurrying and it will affect every other aspect of your life.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to seeing you back here soon.

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