The Importance of Slowing Down

On World Environment Day (5 June), I attended at a conference on sustainability. Such a broad, general topic. I was in a dark mood when I arrived, convinced that I would waste a whole morning listening to self-congratulatory speeches and banal, motherhood statements on sustainability, when I had a lot of work waiting back in office for me.

To my surprise, I found myself hearing of things I had never heard much of before. Things like the Circular Economy, and hearing about cool companies that were helping to make it happen like Airbnb (you open up spare rooms in homes to tourists), Uber (you offer to drive people who need a ride and/or are going the same way), Rent Tycoons (you offer to rent stuff you own to others), Block Pooling (people from the same neighbourhood share professional services, contacts, advice and lend/borrow stuff from one another). One speaker also talked about how IKEA bought back used Christmas trees from their customers for a fee, to be used to make furniture! This was a nice concept of a win-win.

It was immensely refreshing to hear about such awesome concepts that were good for the environment and also good business.

I thought about all the tasks I was busy with at work, and some of the concepts I had heard from the panellists was actually helping me change my perspective on how I would tackle some of them. And wasn't it ironic that here I was, supposedly wasting my time at an irrelevant conference, and having all these thoughts that might actually make a bigger impact on my work than if I had spent an incredibly efficient morning finishing all of my tasks really well.

A speaker talked about how "we are accelerating our thoughts and actions at a breathless rate" today. With internet literally on our fingertips, we can gather information, find out what other people are doing, consume news and entertainment at an incredible, continuous rate.

All this might make it seem like we can make really good decisions, but I actually think this might result in us making decisions similar to everybody else. Worse, all this information overload and busyness is stifling the creativity and our ability to think deeply about issues. Yes, I am not into Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Yet I also fill whatever time I have with work, children, really good fiction novels (by the way, I recently discovered Michael Crichton - what a renaissance man!).

I realized that there is value in taking time to sit back and to think deeply about our situations, if not every day, then at least once a week. To take a step back, reflect on what has been happening in our lives, think about the roots of the problems, the bigger picture, ask ourselves questions and let our minds wander and come up with answers and solutions that are true to ourselves.

I am very sure that by taking a little time to do this every week, we will become a lot more focused and effective when we ARE busy. And we will be able to see a lot more clearly, through all the BS and the details that clutter up our eyeballs, ears and fog up our minds, the best answer and solution that has a big impact and would bring us nearer to our goals, not further.

As they say, fast is slow and slow is fast. Less is more and more is less.