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No Wasted Moments

It occurred to me recently that we may be exceeding the speed limit.

Technology creates an illusion of instant communication with people halfway around the world. Time blurs into abstraction in meetings spanning half-a-dozen different time zones. (A friend insists it would be easier if we all just switched our clocks to GMT. There are days when I agree.) Corporations become global in the blink of an eye. Employees squeeze into a shrinking “Do More with Less” box, as if productivity could be a bottomless reservoir.

Working lunches expand into working breakfasts, coffees, and dinners. Teleconferences provide stellar opportunities for multi-tasking, with telephone headset firmly implanted in the ear (when will they be doing this surgically, I wonder?), leaving both hands free on the keyboard to answer email and send instant messages.

Blackberries and ever-smaller laptops invade conference rooms, ostensibly for note-taking but actually for even more multi-tasking. I was horrified a few years ago by a high-level consultant who sat in a conference with a client — working on a proposal for another client.

Almost everyone I meet seems slightly panicky, with the wide-eyed expression of a small gazelle scenting a predator. “Think time,” time to just sit and integrate, assimilate, and synthesize new ideas, is impossible. What if someone saw you just sitting there? It’s no wonder that companies everywhere are moaning about the death of innovation.

There’s tremendous pressure even on kids to act, produce, do, stay busy. I had lunch with a friend last week who told me she wanted to take her kids on a camping trip, but they were too busy with school and sports to take a weekend off.

Don’t just do something, stand there!

Fortunately, there’s a growing counter-culture. The Slow Food movement has seeded its ideas into slow cities, slow journalism, slow trade, and even slow management. Yoga and meditation are becoming mainstream, though I’m concerned about the number of “quick! easy! foolproof!” meditation advertisements I see.

Like many worthwhile things, slowing down is simple but not easy, simple but not quick, simple and far from foolproof. The idea of just sitting and doing nothing — truly nothing — for even five or ten minutes, much less half an hour or longer, is appalling to most of us. Even when we claim we’re doing “nothing,” we’re usually doing something: watching television, reading, chatting with family or friends. And then there’s that fear that if you slow down, you’ll slow to a stop, and suddenly nothing will get done and you’ll be fired for non-performance.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, counter-intuitive as it may seem. Some of the corporate world’s most successful CEOs and leaders, men and women with huge demands on their time, routinely practice doing nothing. (Don’t believe me? Read The Corporate Mystic, an eye-opening look into the ideas and practices of high-level executives in organizations such as Motorola, Eastman Kodak, Nike, and others.)

Here are three ways you can slow down.

1. Schedule time on your calendar to do nothing. Really. Just sit. Let your mind wander without trying to problem-solve, plan, or figure anything out. Watch it play, like you’d watch a puppy or a kitten. After you’ve done this for a while, you’ll be amazed at the images, insights, and realizations that will come.
2. Create a “no-work zone” around your mealtimes. Even if it’s just a fifteen-minute break to eat the sandwich you brought from home, turn away from your computer, ignore the phone, don’t touch that stack of papers. You may be surprised by the taste and texture your turkey sandwich never seemed to have before. Or — wait — is it actually tuna salad, and you hadn’t noticed?
3. Instead of answering email, take a walk down the hall and talk to people. On your way, see who’s hanging out with whom by the printer, notice the management team assembled in the “fishbowl” conference room (every office seems to have one of these nowadays), and who’s looking particularly stressed — or especially calm. Noticing these things give you clues about what’s going on in the organization, an added plus along with the physical boost of actually moving around, and the benefit you’ll get from talking face-to-face instead of electronically.

When you slow down, taking time to pause and re-orient yourself in the world, you’ll find yourself making more considered decisions, responding with greater insight and compassion, and — paradoxically — being more productive. And you might even start gaining a reputation for being calm and unflappable.

What ways do you use to slow down, be still, do nothing? I’d love to learn your favorites, and hear about your experiences.

“The mind, when it is quiet, delivers up phenomenal intuition which can then be focused to design a next-generation product or to understand what’s driving particular custoemrs.” Ed McCracken, CEO, Silicon Graphics

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