Slowing down time

[darkemeralds]

Thomas Sterner, in The Practicing Mind (which I've just read at the recommendation of verilyvexed), tells an almost magical story of slowing down time. Two opposing forces had converged in his life: his philosophical decision to live more mindfully, and a period of impossible scheduling demands in his business.

He disregards the screaming, panicky voices in his head that urge him to hurry; he takes off his watch, and he tells himself quietly that if he can't make his next scheduled appointment, he can call the client. He reminds himself that his commitment to slowing down--to mindfulness--is important to his health and his family. He disciplines himself to make every movement deliberate and careful, and as slow as possible.

In the end, he gets all his work done in forty percent less time than normal. He says that maybe time actually slows down.

So I decided to try it. I was running a little late this morning and really didn't want to walk into our 9:00 staff meeting at 9:05. I did what Sterner did: I told myself not to panic. I laid out my tools (in this case, makeup brushes and stuff), considered each one, used it, put it away...I made my bed neatly...I did up my clothes, paying attention to each button and zipper...I'd misplaced my phone and had to patiently change a setting on my laptop so I could Google Voice myself and locate-ring it.

I ignored the clock. Once I left the house, I rode without haste, noticing the morning and my leg muscles and the nice whirring sound my bike tires make on the street. I stopped patiently at every red light. I attended to making graceful, smooth turns and braking safely on the downhill. I was aware of all the traffic, and none of it bothered me.

I got to my office seven minutes early, and was among the first in the meeting room, cool and unhurried.

It was amazing.

While there may indeed be a kind of magic in mindfulness, I noticed two practical things that would explain a lot of the effect: moving slowly from one task gave me time to consider how best to do the next one, so I made fewer mistakes. And calming my mind resulted in fewer wasted motions and better memory--nothing forgotten or mislaid.

Besides the practical outcome of getting to work in good time, I feel so much better than I would have if I'd rushed. The blood-pressure difference was palpable. And it's fun! It feels a bit like cheating, which makes it extremely gratifying and sneaky.

Comments

Chop Wood, Draw Water

[executrix]

Festina lente! (I kept typing "festuna" which I guess is the kind of fish you eat with lentils rather than white beans.)

And the *opposite* of mindfulness is "There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over."

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[runningwater]

This is very, very interesting. I'm going to see if the library has that book.

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[darkemeralds]

Well worth your time. It's short--only a three-hour audiobook--and there's really nothing in it that you don't already know, but it's stated in clear and real-world terms that I've found particularly useful.

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[darkemeralds]

Festuna. Hee!

Yes, "festina lente" is a good short version of Sterner's book, as is "Slow and steady wins the race," so nothing really new there, but the timing and particular content of the book hit me just so.

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[lamentables]

'more haste, less speed' is the warning I heard a lot as a child, and the thing that popped into my head when I read your post

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[darkemeralds]

Is that a distinction without a difference, do you think?

Sterner seems to avoid even the idea of "haste". The increased efficiency of his work (he tunes grand pianos in big concert halls), he claims, actually comes as a direct result of consciously doing everything more slowly--of deliberately not hastening in any way.

I'm finding two things: that it's extremely hard to do consistently, and that when I manage it, there really is a paradoxical increase in my efficiency.

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[lamentables]

Not sure if you're reading that in the same way it was used. (I couldn't work out how to punctuate it.) The meaning, at least in my family, was that the more you are derailed by haste, the slower you will be to complete any given task. I still mutter it to myself sometimes in the kind of situation you describe, where the flailing around trying to be fast is the thing that takes up time.

Re: Chop Wood, Draw Water

[darkemeralds]

Ohhhh! Okay, it's more of an if-then statement: the more you hasten, the less speed you'll make. Got it. (It's like "feed a cold, starve a fever" which I finally understood to be a similarly if-then kind of deal.)

"Flailing around trying to be fast" has been eating great swathes of my life, and the sad thing is, it's not even natural to me. I'm a slow person with some rather bear-like qualities, and I'm just so much happier taking things slowly. It's been quite a revelation.

[(Anonymous)]

That's amazing! Definitely trying this.

[ranunculus]

I've been thinking about this post since you made it. It is a very nice way to state something I've been struggling with in getting to work. Over the last month I've realized that I go into panic mode every time I -leave- for work. Deliberately calming myself at that point really helps.

[darkemeralds]

Leaving for work has been my proving ground, too. I don't love my job, so that contributes to my panic and woe. I'm not a morning person, so that, too, makes the hour between rising and leaving difficult for me.

But mostly, I just flail. I waste a thousand steps and gestures every morning, and a thousand kilowatts of brain energy chiding myself for being disorganized. But even when I'm organized (clothes cleaned and ready, lunch made the night before, vitamins set out, etc.), I can flail like nobody's business.

Pausing and inserting just a small sliver of time between one morning action and the next--which is another way of saying 'substituting a little thought for a little action'--is making an enormous difference.

[without_me]

May I share this story with friends/colleagues at work? I don't know whether it will be feasible to implement within the work environment, but it certainly seems worth striving for.

[darkemeralds]

Oh, by all means, share away. I'm no expert, and I'd really recommend the book to anyone who'd like a fuller picture, since I'm just experimenting wildly.

But everyone I speak to about this has a story of "that one irritating person" they used to work with who was slow, slow, slow and yet who managed magically to accomplish more work than anyone else.

One point the book makes is how goal-oriented and speed-oriented we are in western culture, and how damaging that is to us, economically and physically (not to mention spiritually).

I'll be interested to hear any stories that arise from your trying or sharing these ideas.

[without_me]

Thank you! I will definitely look at the book, as well. But you're a real person, talking about a real experience--as opposed to some nebulous author, HA!

[darkemeralds]

Hee! Well, I would not want to be a nebulous author.

Thomas Sterner, the author, is a piano-tuner by trade. He builds, restores, and sets up concert pianos, a very old fashioned and manual discipline. He's not a guru or a persuader or some hippie-dippy Buddhist wannabe (or a sports coach). He's "just this guy, you know?". He has a lot of credibility as such, and I imagine his book would appeal to a lot of people who might otherwise view such ideas with suspicion.

[vampirefan]

when i read what you said in another comment about someone at work being slow slow but still getting things done? that totally made me think about my dad.

my dad has worked various factory jobs, has been a cta bus driver and retired from a steel warehouse where he worked an overhead crane. he has always told us (his kids) that he would get to work early so he doesn't have to rush getting ready to start on time. additionally, he always seemed to have stories about how his managers would tell him he was too slow try to rush and threaten his job, yet my dad rarely (and i would almost say never) made mistakes and always got his work done.

i gotta run.. i'll come back and finish this thought...

[darkemeralds]

When I envision your father's large, detailed paintings, I clearly see an artist who knows how to take things slowly. And look at all that he not only undertakes, but completes. He's probably living proof of the concept!

The fact that managers don't like the style of the slow, steady worker is a real indictment of the whole crazed American system. I've experienced it myself: kudos flow to those Hares who appear the busiest and most overburdened, and the slow, quiet Tortoises are kept back because they appear to be working less, or to be less dynamic.

Fact is, that attractive dynamism isn't what's needed in most kinds of work. But steadiness isn't sexy, I guess.

I have this image--I'm sure I've seen it done on film--of someone, maybe me, walking peacefully down the street at a normal pace, and everyone all around me buzzing past at high speed.

Or taking a dog for a walk and the dog literally runs circles around you and expends twenty times as much energy, but you both get where you're going at the same time.

[vampirefan]

it's so true! people who act busy or make a lot of noise when they do stuff, get noticed.

also, to finish my earlier thought...

my dad has also kept pretty detailed logs of his workday.

for example, when he worked at the steel company (where he retired from) he had maybe 2 or 3 different templates where he would log his job. he had me make them and he'd make copies.

he would log the date and then log however many moves of material he made with the crane. or if he was bundling stuff he'd keep track of how many bundles he made... or if he was driving a particular crane/forklift/etc. he would record how many things he moved... he wanted to remember what he did that day. (he would also keep step by step instructions for how to do things.) he figured, if those irritating/demanding managers ever wanted to say he wasn't doing his work, he would be able to tell them exactly what he did.

the most chilling story he told us: a manager kept telling him that he had to work faster - as usual. my dad kept saying, i'm not gonna rush. i want to be safe. a coworker of my dad's was always rushing. huffing and puffing, being stressed and worried. he was very near retirement... i'm talking months away. one day, he was rushing to finish putting some ginourmous metal coils (it was metal strips, many feet wide, all rolled up into a giant coil, thousands of pounds) in place...my impression was that they would move the coils apart to pick the correct strips (there were different thicknesses) and then move the coils back when they were done. well, because he was in a rush, the guy forgot to put down the stopper they used to prevent the coils from rolling once they were in place. the coil started rolling slowly and the guy could see it was going to go to far... he rushed forward to put down the stopper and tripped and fell. the coil kept going and crushed this poor man's head.

my father was freaked out, but more than ever, stood his ground.

[darkemeralds]

Wow! There is so much in that story!

The quantifying, for one thing. I mean, it's too bad that your father felt like he had to prove his productivity when others didn't have to do it, but what a great thing to do in the workplace! It's been a revelation to me to work in an environment where we have to quantify what we do, and account for it, and find ways to improve (hurrying isn't one of those ways).

But also the safety aspect. How many industrial accidents are the result of all that hurrying? How many people die every year just from sheer being in a rush? A lot, I bet.