If you recognize the Simon and Garfunkel reference, you also remember a time when you could not type in a prompt and receive a two-page book review, or an itinerary for a month-long trip, or a compiled scrapbook with photos from your trip. All of those things, for better and for worse, took time.
You had to read the book. Think about the book. Put your thoughts on the page in a first draft. Leave that draft and come back to it. Tinker with it. Add some more thoughts. Edit it. Proof it. Submit it.
That trip to lands unknown? You headed to the library to check out some Lonely Planet books, supplemented by some internet research. You talked to friends who had visited said places. You talked to your travel companions. You thought about each day and each activity. It took time and effort, but it built up excitement about each idea you came up with. Once on the trip, you talked to locals and made plans on the fly.
The scrapbook you painstakingly glued together after the trip? No doubt, the sticky fingers and slightly misaligned photos could be frustrating, but again, baked into the process was the appreciation for your trip, and the reflection on which photos merited top-page status, and which never needed to be seen again. You picked the highlights, not an algorithm. The analog way.
In all aspects of our life, work and personal, there is now an expectation of speed and efficiency. That document needs to be ready within an hour. You need to be available to answer a question immediately. Trip planning shoud happen in hours, not days. To slow down is to actively resist that momentum. It means offering up more of your time, and in return, taking back control. It means recognizing that the extra effort and slower speed can be beneficial.
Recently, I have caught a few mistakes that happened when I was rushing the process, whether in my personal correspondence or in work documents. Margins that ended up a bit wonky from relying on autoformatting, spell check that autocorrected for the wrong word in a text, reliance on data that I found in a quick online search and had not slowed down to fully understand. It was unsettling to realize how much speed was dictating my choices. Now, I am consciously building pauses back into my routine, to force a slowing of pace and a moment of reflection. To recognize that just because I can produce something quickly does not mean I should do so. Efficiency comes at a cost.
Photo credit for banner goes to Michael Kuhn, courtesy of Creative Commons. Thank you!
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