This book summary has a companion post for Premium Members: 🔒 How to Slow Down with “In Praise of Slowness” by Carl Honoré (+ Infographic)
After over four years on this journey, it’s hard to believe that I’m just now getting around to Carl Honoré’s original book: In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Amazon).
Although, I did previously read Carl’s third book, The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter, and Live Better in a World Addicted to Speed (Summary | Amazon).
In Praise of Slowness was originally published in 2004—before Twitter and Instagram ever existed. The world seems to have only sped up since then.
While some of the stats in the book may be outdated at this point, Honoré delivers a good mix of personal storytelling, primary and secondary research, and insights on the Slow Movement.
Going into every aspect of the book would make this summary far too long, but you should be aware that Honoré also covers slowness in relation to: sex, medicine, children/parenting, and more. Pick up the full book if this summary piques your interest!
The questions that lie at heart of this book: Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time-sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down?
— Carl Honoré
Quick Housekeeping:
- All quotes are from the author unless otherwise stated.
- I’ve added emphasis (in bold) to quotes throughout this post.
- This summary is organized by themes I’ve identified (not necessarily by the author’s chapters).
Summary Contents: Click a link to jump to a section below
- Top Slow Quotes from Others
- The Busy Life & Time Sickness
- Evolution of our Relationship with Time
- Slow Myth Busting
- Slow Philosophy & Core Tenets
- Origin & Evolution of the Slow Movement
- Spirituality
- Mind
- Meditation & Movement
- Education
- Work
- Leisure
About Carl Honoré & His Aha Moment:
Carl’s original TED Talk from 2005 is a nice introduction:
I highlighted Carl’s aha moment as one of eleven stories about how slow and simple living leaders got started. Carl saw an article for “The One-Minute Bedtime Story” and thought about using it with his young son.
- “Part of me feels horribly selfish when I accelerate the bedtime ritual, but another part simply cannot resist the itch to hurry on to the next thing on my agenda—supper, emails, reading, bills, more work, the news bulletin on television. Taking a long, languid stroll through the world of Dr. Seuss is not an option. It is too slow.”
- “My whole life has turned into an exercise in hurry, in packing more and more into every hour. I am Scrooge with a stopwatch, obsessed with saving every last scrap of time, a minute here, a few seconds there.”
- “After my bedtime-story epiphany at the airport in Rome, I return to London with a mission: to investigate the price of speed and the prospects for slowing down in a world obsessed with going faster and faster.”
The Slow Movement: In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré (Book Summary)
Top Slow Quotes from Others
- “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” — Gandhi
- “For fast-acting relief from stress, try slowing down.” — Lily Tomlin
- “Take the time to live more deeply.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
- “Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.” — Søren Kierkegaard
- “To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The whole struggle of life is to some extent a struggle about how slowly or how quickly to do each thing.” — Sten Nadolny, author of The Discovery of Slowness
- “When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself.” — Milan Kundera, author of the novella Slowness
- “It is a Western disease to make time finite, and then to impose speed on all aspects of life.” — Satish Kumar
- “Despite what people think, the discussion about speed is never really about the current state of technology. It goes much deeper than that, it goes back to the human desire for transcendence … It’s hard to think about the fact that we’re going to die; it’s unpleasant, so we constantly seek ways to distract ourselves from the awareness of our own mortality. Speed, with the sensory rush it gives, is one strategy for distraction.” — Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto
- “Being Slow means that you control the rhythms of your own life. You decide how fast you have to go in any given context. If today I want to go fast, I go fast; if tomorrow I want to go slow, I go slow. What we are fighting for is the right to determine our own tempos.” — Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food
- “We want to strike a balance between the modern and the traditional that promotes good living.” — Bruna Sibille
- “Reading implies time for reflection, a slowing-down that destroys the mass’s dynamic efficiency.” — Paul Virilio, French philosopher
The Busy Life & Time Sickness
“The world is still straining to do everything faster—and paying a heavy price for it. The toll taken by the hurry-up culture is well documented. We are driving the planet and ourselves towards burnout. We are so time-poor and time-sick that we neglect our friends, families and partners. We barely know how to enjoy things any more because we are always looking ahead to the next thing. Much of the food we eat is bland and unhealthy. With our children caught up in the same hailstorm of hurry, the future looks bleak.”
- “All the things that bind us together and make life worth living—community, family, friendship—thrive on the one thing we never have enough of: time.”
- “In 1982 Larry Dossey, an American physician, coined the term ‘time-sickness’ to describe the obsessive belief that ‘time is getting away, that there isn’t enough of it, and that you must pedal faster and faster to keep up.’ These days, the whole world is time-sick. We all belong to the same cult of speed.”
- “Time-sickness can also be a symptom of a deeper, existential malaise. In the final stages before burnout, people often speed up to avoid confronting their unhappiness.”
- “Inevitably, a life of hurry can become superficial. When we rush, we skim the surface, and fail to make real connections with the world or other people.”
- “We have forgotten how to look forward to things, and how to enjoy the moment when they arrive.”
- “In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts.”
- “Instead of thinking deeply, or letting an idea simmer in the back of the mind, our instinct now is to reach for the nearest sound bite.“
- “This is where our obsession with going fast and saving time leads. To road rage, air rage, shopping rage, relationship rage, office rage, vacation rage, gym rage. Thanks to speed, we live in the age of rage.“
- “And not only do we enjoy going fast, we get used to it, we become ‘velocitized.’ When we first drive onto a motorway, 70 miles per hour seems fast. Then, after a few minutes, it feels routine. Pull onto a slip road, brake to 30 mph and the lower speed seems teeth-gnashingly slow. Velocitization fuels a constant need for more speed.“
- “As we go on accelerating, our relationship with time grows ever more fraught and dysfunctional.”
Evolution of our Relationship with Time
“If we are ever going to slow down, we must understand why we accelerated in the first place, why the world got so revved up, so tightly scheduled. And to do that, we need to start at the very beginning, by looking at our relationship with time itself.”
- “Survival was one incentive for measuring time. Ancient civilizations used calendars to work out when to plant and harvest crops. Right from the start, though, timekeeping proved to be a double-edged sword. On the upside, scheduling can make anyone, from peasant farmer to software engineer, more efficient. Yet as soon as we start to parcel up time, the tables turn, and time takes over. We become slaves to the schedule. Schedules give us deadlines, and deadlines, by their very nature, give us a reason to rush. As an Italian proverb puts it: Man measures time, and time measures man.“
- “Lewis Mumford, the eminent social critic, identified the clock as ‘the key machine’ of the Industrial Revolution. But it was not until the late nineteenth century that the creation of standard time unlocked its full potential.”
- “Benjamin Franklin was among the first to envision a world devoted to rest and relaxation. Inspired by the technological breakthroughs of the latter 1700s, he predicted that man would soon work no more than four hours a week.”
- “In the United States, meanwhile, a group of intellectuals known as the Transcendentalists exalted the gentle simplicity of a life rooted in nature. One of their number, Henry David Thoreau, retired to a one-room cabin beside Walden Pond near Boston in 1845, from which he decried modern life as a treadmill of ‘infinite bustle…nothing but work, work, work.‘”
- “In 1884, Charles Dudley Warner, an American editor and essayist, gave vent to the popular unease, echoing Plautus in the process: ‘The chopping up of time into rigid periods is an invasion of individual freedom and makes no allowances for differences in temperament and feeling.’“
- “To teach workers the new time discipline demanded by modern capitalism, the ruling classes set about promoting punctuality as a civic duty and a moral virtue, while denigrating slowness and tardiness as cardinal sins. In its 1891 catalogue, the Electric Signal Clock Company warned against the evils of failing to keep pace: ‘If there is one virtue that should be cultivated more than any other by him who would succeed in life, it is punctuality: if there is one error to be avoided, it is being behind time.’ One of the firm’s clocks, the aptly named Autocrat, promised to ‘revolutionize stragglers and behind-time people.'”
- “As the clock tightened its grip and technology made it possible to do everything more quickly, hurry and haste seeped into every corner of life. People were expected to think faster, work faster, talk faster, read faster, write faster, eat faster, move faster.”
- “Tempted and titillated at every turn, we seek to cram in as much consumption and as many experiences as possible. As well as glittering careers, we want to take art courses, work out at the gym, read the newspaper and every book on the bestseller list, eat out with friends, go clubbing, play sports, watch hours of television, listen to music, spend time with the family, buy all the newest fashions and gadgets, go to the cinema, enjoy intimacy and great sex with our partners, holiday in far-flung locations and maybe even do some meaningful volunteer work. The result is a gnawing disconnect between what we want from life and what we can realistically have, which feeds the sense that there is never enough time.“
- “Part of the answer may lie in the way we think about time itself. In some philosophical traditions—Chinese, Hindu and Buddhist, to name three—time is cyclical. On Canada’s Baffin Island, the Inuit use the same word—uvatiarru—to mean both ‘in the distant past’ and ‘in the distant future.’ Time, in such cultures, is always coming as well as going. It is constantly around us, renewing itself, like the air we breathe. In the Western tradition, time is linear, an arrow flying remorselessly from A to B. It is a finite, and therefore precious, resource. Christianity piles on pressure to put every moment to good use. The Benedictine monks kept a tight schedule because they believed the devil would find work for idle hands to do. In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin summed up the Western obsession with making the most of every minute with a stern call to action: ‘A man who wastes one hour of time has not discovered the meaning of life.'”
- “Perhaps the greatest challenge of the Slow movement will be to fix our neurotic relationship with time itself.”
Slow Myth Busting
Slow is not just a rate of change; it’s a philosophy of life
- “In this book, Fast and Slow do more than just describe a rate of change. They are shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life. Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity. It is about making real and meaningful connections—with people, culture, work, food, everything. The paradox is that Slow does not always mean slow. As we shall see, performing a task in a Slow manner often yields faster results. It is also possible to do things quickly while maintaining a Slow frame of mind.”
Slow is not Anti-Speed
- “Let’s make one thing clear: this book is not a declaration of war against speed. Speed has helped to remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating. Who wants to live without the Internet or jet travel? The problem is that our love of speed, our obsession with doing more and more in less and less time, has gone too far; it has turned into an addiction, a kind of idolatry. Even when speed starts to backfire, we invoke the go-faster gospel. Falling behind at work? Get a quicker Internet connection. No time for that novel you got at Christmas? Learn to speed-read. Diet not working? Try liposuction. Too busy to cook? Buy a microwave. And yet some things cannot, should not, be sped up. They take time; they need slowness. When you accelerate things that should not be accelerated, when you forget how to slow down, there is a price to pay.“
Slow is not Slow Motion or Anti-Technology
- “Despite what some critics say, the Slow movement is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. Nor is it a Luddite attempt to drag the whole planet back to some pre-industrial utopia. On the contrary, the movement is made up of people like you and me, people who want to live better in a fast-paced, modern world … Being Slow does not mean being torpid, backward or technophobic.“
Slow is not Anti-Capitalism
- “Inevitably, the Slow movement overlaps with the anti-globalization crusade. Proponents of both believe that turbo-capitalism offers a one-way ticket to burnout, for the planet and the people living on it. They claim we can live better if we consume, manufacture and work at a more reasonable pace. In common with moderate anti-globalizers, however, Slow activists are not out to destroy the capitalist system. Rather, they seek to give it a human face. Petrini himself talks of ‘virtuous globalization.’“
Slow is not One-Size-Fits-All
- “There is no one-size-fits-all formula for slowing down, no universal guide to the right speed. Each person, act, moment has its own eigenzeit. Some people are content to live at a speed that would send the rest of us to an early grave. We all must have the right to choose the pace that makes us happy. As Uwe Kliemt, the Tempo Giusto pianist, says, ‘The world is a richer place when we make room for different speeds.'”
Slow Philosophy & Core Tenets
“Though speed, busyness and an obsession with saving time remain the hallmarks of modern life, a powerful backlash is brewing. The Slow movement is on the march. Instead of doing everything faster, many people are decelerating, and finding that Slowness helps them to live, work, think and play better. But is the Slow movement really a movement? It certainly has all the ingredients that academics look for—popular sympathy, a blueprint for a new way of life, grassroots action. True, the Slow movement has no formal structure, and still suffers from low brand recognition. Many people slow down—working fewer hours, say, or finding time to cook—without feeling part of a global crusade. Yet every act of deceleration is grist to the mill.”
Balance & The Middle Path
- “That is why the Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word: balance. Be fast when it makes sense to be fast, and be slow when slowness is called for. Seek to live at what musicians call the tempo giusto—the right speed … Like most people, I want to find a way to live better by striking a balance between fast and slow.”
- “What the world needs, and what the Slow movement offers, is a middle path, a recipe for marrying la dolce vita with the dynamism of the information age. The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes somewhere in between. Being Slow means never rushing, never striving to save time just for the sake of it. It means remaining calm and unflustered even when circumstances force us to speed up.”
Less But Better
- “Many recommend doing fewer things in order to do them better, a core tenet of the Slow philosophy … The twenty-four-hour society is not intrinsically evil. If we approach it in a Slow spirit—doing fewer things, with less hurry—it can give us the flexibility we need to decelerate … Slower, it turns out, often means better—better health, better work, better business, better family life, better exercise, better cuisine and better sex.”
- “The central tenet of the Slow philosophy is taking the time to do things properly, and thereby enjoy them more. Whatever its effect on the economic balance sheet, the Slow philosophy delivers the things that really make us happy: good health, a thriving environment, strong communities and relationships, freedom from perpetual hurry.”
Lifestyle Revolution
- “A genuinely Slow world implies nothing less than a lifestyle revolution.”
Origin & Evolution of the Slow Movement
“The Slow movement is still taking shape. It has no central headquarters or website, no single leader, no political party to carry its message. Many people decide to slow down without ever feeling part of a cultural trend, let alone a global crusade. What matters, though, is that a growing minority is choosing slowness over speed. Every act of deceleration gives another push to the Slow movement.“
- “Through the twentieth century, resistance to the cult of speed grew, and began to coalesce into broad social movements. The counterculture earthquake of the 1960s inspired millions to slow down and live more simply. A similar philosophy gave birth to the Voluntary Simplicity movement. In the late 1980s, the New York–based Trends Research Institute identified a phenomenon known as downshifting, which means swapping a high-pressure, high-earning, high-tempo lifestyle for a more relaxed, less consumerist existence. Unlike decelerators from the hippie generation, downshifters are driven less by political or environmental scruples than by the desire to lead more rewarding lives. They are willing to forgo money in return for time and slowness.“
- “It (The Slow Movement) all started in 1986, when McDonald’s opened a branch beside the famous Spanish Steps in Rome. To many locals, this was one restaurant too far: the barbarians were inside the gates and something had to be done. To roll back the fast-food tsunami sweeping across the planet, Carlo Petrini, a charismatic culinary writer, launched Slow Food. As the name suggests, the movement stands for everything that McDonald’s does not: fresh, local, seasonal produce; recipes handed down through the generations; sustainable farming; artisanal production; leisurely dining with family and friends. Slow Food also preaches ‘eco-gastronomy’—the notion that eating well can, and should, go hand in hand with protecting the environment.“
- “Petrini thinks this is a good starting point for tackling our obsession with speed in all walks of life. The group’s manifesto states: ‘A firm defence of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life…. Our defence should begin at the table with Slow Food.’“
- “The (Slow Food) group’s manifesto is a call to arms against the cult of speed in all its forms: ‘Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model. We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Food.’“
- “Slow Food has captured the public imagination and spread across the planet because it touches on a basic human desire. We all like to eat well, and are healthier and happier when we do.”
- “The Slow movement has its own momentum. Saying no to speed takes courage, and people are more likely to take the plunge knowing they are not alone, that others share the same vision and are taking the same risks. The Slow movement provides strength in numbers. Every time a group like Slow Food or the Society for the Deceleration of Time makes headlines, it becomes a little easier for the rest of us to question speed. What’s more, once people reap the rewards of slowing down in one sphere of life they often go on to apply the same lesson in others.“
- “Collectively, we know our lives are too frantic, and we want to slow down. Individually, more of us are applying the brakes and finding that our quality of life improves. The big question now is when the individual will become the collective. When will the many personal acts of deceleration occurring across the world reach critical mass? When will the Slow movement turn into a Slow revolution?“
Spirituality
“Many find that slowing down has a spiritual dimension. But many others do not. The Slow movement is broad enough to accommodate both. In any case, the gap between the two may not be as wide as it seems. The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections—with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds. Some call that living better. Others would describe it as spiritual.“
- “These days, many people are seeking refuge from speed in the safe harbour of spirituality. While mainstream Christian churches face dwindling congregations, their evangelical rivals are thriving. Buddhism is booming across the West, as are bookstores, chat rooms and healing centres dedicated to the eclectic, metaphysical doctrines of New Ageism. All of this makes sense at a time when people crave slowness. The spirit, by its very nature, is Slow. No matter how hard you try, you cannot accelerate enlightenment. Every religion teaches the need to slow down in order to connect with the self, with others and with a higher force. In Psalm 46, the Bible says: ‘Be still then, and know that I am God.'”
Mind
“In the war against the cult of speed, the front line is inside our heads. Acceleration will remain our default setting until attitudes change. But changing what we think is just the beginning. If the Slow movement is really to take root, we have to go deeper. We have to change the way we think.”
- “Shifting the mind into lower gear can bring better health, inner calm, enhanced concentration and the ability to think more creatively. It can bring us what Milan Kundera calls ‘the wisdom of slowness.’“
- “Research has shown that people think more creatively when they are calm, unhurried and free from stress, and that time pressure leads to tunnel vision.”
- “My eureka moments seldom come in a fast-paced office or a high-stress meeting. More often they occur when I am in a relaxed state—soaking in the bath, cooking a meal or even jogging in the park. The greatest thinkers in history certainly knew the value of shifting the mind into low gear. Charles Darwin described himself as a ‘slow thinker.’ Albert Einstein was famous for spending ages staring into space in his office at Princeton University.“
- “Einstein appreciated the need to marry the two modes of thought: ‘Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.’ That is why the smartest, most creative people know when to let the mind wander and when to knuckle down to hard work. In other words, when to be Slow and when to be Fast.”
- “As one Zen master put it, ‘Instead of saying ‘Don’t just sit there; do something’ we should say the opposite, ‘Don’t just do something; sit there.’“
Meditation & Movement
“One way to cultivate inner Slowness is to make time for activities that defy acceleration—meditation, knitting, gardening, yoga, painting, reading, walking, Chi Kung.”
- “Meditation is one way to train the mind to relax. It lowers blood pressure and generates more of the slower alpha and theta waves in the brain. And research shows that the effects last long after the meditating ends.”
- “Take yoga, an ancient Hindu regimen of physical, spiritual and mental exercises that seeks to bring body, mind and spirit into harmony. The word ‘yoga’ means ‘unite’ in Sanskrit. In the West, though, we tend to focus on the physical side of the discipline—the breathing control, the slow, fluid movements, the postures, or asanas. Yoga can do wonders for the body, firming and toning muscles, fortifying the immune system, boosting blood circulation and increasing flexibility.”
- “Yoga can help achieve that core of stillness. It seeks to sustain a person’s chi—the life force, or energy—which can be hampered by stress, anxiety, illness and overwork. Even those who dismiss the idea of chi as mystical claptrap often find that yoga helps them develop a Slow frame of mind. Through the unhurried, controlled movements, they acquire more self-awareness, concentration and patience.”
- “Chi Kung is another Eastern exercise regime whose Slow approach to the mind and body is winning converts. Sometimes described as ‘yoga with meditation and movement,’ Chi Kung is a generic term for a range of ancient Chinese exercises that promote health by circulating chi round the body. In a standing position, and using the pelvic area as a fulcrum, practitioners move slowly through a series of postures that elongate the limbs. Slow, deep breathing is also important. Chi Kung is not about pumping up the heart rate and sweating profusely; it is about control and awareness. It can improve balance, strength, posture and rhythm of movement. Even more than yoga, it helps to achieve a relaxed mind while in an active state. Chi Kung has many branches, ranging from martial arts such as Kung Fu to the much gentler Tai Chi.”
- “Against that backdrop, walking, the oldest form of exercise, is making a comeback. In the pre-industrial era, people mostly travelled on foot—and that kept them fit. Then came engine power, and people got lazy. Walking became the transport of last resort, a ‘forgotten art’ in the words of the World Health Organization.”
- “Travelling on foot can also be meditative, fostering a Slow frame of mind. When we walk, we are aware of the details around us—birds, trees, the sky, shops and houses, other people. We make connections.“
- “The same goes for gardening. In almost every culture, the garden is a sanctuary, a place to rest and ruminate. Niwa, the Japanese word for garden, means ‘an enclosure purified for the worship of the gods.’ The act of gardening itself—planting, pruning, weeding, watering, waiting for things to grow—can help us slow down. Gardening does not lend itself to acceleration any more than knitting does. Even with a greenhouse, you cannot make plants bloom on demand or bend the seasons to suit your schedule. Nature has its own timetable. In a hurry-up world, where everything is scheduled for maximum efficiency, surrendering to the rhythms of nature can be therapeutic.“
Education
“‘The notion of the slow school destroys the idea that schooling is about cramming, testing, and standardizing experience,’ Holt writes. ‘The slow approach to food allows for discovery, for the development of connoisseurship. Slow food festivals feature new dishes and new ingredients. In the same way, slow schools give scope for invention and response to cultural change, while fast schools just turn out the same old burgers.'”
- “The children still work hard, but without the drudgery of rote learning. Like every other wing of the Slow movement, ‘Slow Schooling’ is about balance.“
“Whenever people talk of the need for children to slow down, play is always high on the agenda. Many studies show that unstructured time for play helps younger children develop their social and language skills, their creative powers and their ability to learn. Unstructured play is the opposite of ‘quality time,’ which implies industry, planning, scheduling and purpose.” - “In the summer of 2001, the dean wrote an open letter to every first-year undergraduate at Harvard. It was an impassioned plea for a new approach to life on campus and beyond. It was also a neat précis of the ideas that lie at the heart of the Slow philosophy. The letter, which now goes out to Harvard freshmen every year, is entitled: Slow Down. Over seven pages, Lewis makes the case for getting more out of university—and life—by doing less. He urges students to think twice before racing through their degrees.“
- “When it comes to academic life, Lewis favours the same less-is-more approach. Get plenty of rest and relaxation, he says, and be sure to cultivate the art of doing nothing. ‘Empty time is not a vacuum to be filled,’ writes the dean. ‘It is the thing that enables the other things on your mind to be creatively rearranged, like the empty square in the 4 x 4 puzzle that makes it possible to move the other fifteen pieces around.’ In other words, doing nothing, being Slow, is an essential part of good thinking.“
Work
“For the Slow movement, the workplace is a key battlefront. When the job gobbles up so many hours, the time left over for everything else gets squeezed. Even the simple things—taking the kids to school, eating supper, chatting to friends—become a race against the clock. A surefire way to slow down is to work less.“
- “‘Burnout used to be something you mainly found in people over forty,’ says one London-based life coach. ‘Now I’m seeing men and women in their thirties, and even their twenties, who are completely burned out.’“
- “For a chilling vision of where this behaviour leads, look no further than Japan, where the locals have a word—karoshi—that means ‘death by overwork.’“
- “These days, we exist to serve the economy, rather than the other way round. Long hours on the job are making us unproductive, error-prone, unhappy and ill.”
- “Work devours the bulk of our waking hours. Everything else in life—family and friends, sex and sleep, hobbies and holidays—is forced to bend around the almighty work schedule.“
- “At the top of the corporate food chain, more and more high achievers are choosing to work freelance or as independent contractors. This allows them to work hard when they choose and still have time to recharge their batteries, enjoy hobbies and hang out with the family.”
- “As it turns out, people who cut their work hours often take a smaller hit financially than they expect. That is because spending less time on the job means spending less money on the things that allow us to work: transport, parking, eating out, coffee, convenience food, childcare, laundry, retail therapy. A smaller income also translates into a smaller tax bill.”
- “Yet working less is just part of the Slow blueprint. People also want to decide when they work.”
- “Things are so much better now. I still work the same number of hours, sometimes even more, but my relationship with time is healthier. Now that I control my own schedule, I move through the working day feeling less hurried and resentful.”
- “Of course, speed has a role in the workplace. A deadline can focus the mind and spur us on to perform remarkable feats. The trouble is that many of us are permanently stuck in deadline mode, leaving little time to ease off and recharge. The things that need slowness—strategic planning, creative thought, building relationships—get lost in the mad dash to keep up, or even just to look busy.“
- “Though sleeping on the job is the ultimate taboo, research has shown that a short ‘power nap‘—around twenty minutes is ideal—can boost energy and productivity.”
- “Many of the most vigorous and successful figures in history were inveterate nappers: John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, Napoleon Bonaparte, John D. Rockefeller, Johannes Brahms. Winston Churchill delivered the most eloquent defence of the afternoon snooze: ‘Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion helped by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one—well, at least one and a half.’“
Leisure
“Whatever happened to the Age of Leisure? Why are so many of us still working so hard? One reason is money. Everyone needs to earn a living, but the endless hunger for consumer goods means that we need more and more cash. So instead of taking productivity gains in the form of extra time off, we take them in higher incomes.”
- “How to make the best use of free time is not a new concern. Two thousand years ago, Aristotle declared that one of the central challenges facing man was how to fill his leisure.“
- “Plato believed that the highest form of leisure was to be still and receptive to the world, a view echoed by modern intellectuals.”
- “Franz Kafka put it this way: ‘You don’t need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, simply wait. Don’t even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.’“
- “In his 1935 essay, In Praise of Idleness, Russell wrote that a four-hour workday would make us ‘more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion.’ With so much leisure, life would be sweet, slow and civilized.”
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