Perceived wisdom may tell us to slow down our lives but maybe pressure brings the best results, says Lucy Kellaway.

Read an alternative view to our mantra that slow beats fast. Let us know what you think.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7440153.stm

• We have adopted a corporate mind-set long on quantity, short on quality, Geir Berthelsen says
• Our basic needs as humans of belonging, care and love are fulfilled by slowing down
• To create great cities, we need to promote human interaction based on basic human values

Read full article: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/12/geir.berthelsen.slow.movement/

Remember That the question is not “WHY SLOW?! It is “WHY FAST?!”

But WHY FAST? Because you want to make some things in life go fast, so that you have more time to do the things you enjoy more slowly!

To not be in a hurry all the time is our generation’s most important form of wealth!

Is it possible in today’s superfast world to live slow? Would I be able to keep my job? Provide a good living for my family? Does being ‘slow’ mean low efficiency, low effectiveness?

No! If that were the case, slow would be impossible!

Slow Time! Slow Living! It’s all about balance… time for silence, time for planning, time for observing, time for reflection, time for caring, time for friendship, time for loving…

Would all this destroy the efficiency and effectiveness in one’s work, whatever it is?

No, it would strengthen it! It would make it even more important.

You don’t have to travel somewhere else to find SlowTime! Or SlowLiving! You own it, wherever you are.

Get inspired by Sam Harris’ ‘Postcards from home’, they are from his own back yard. Sam says “Spending time with my family, doing nothing more than watching the birds flit from bush to bush is conducive to the sort of photographs I make.”

Visit Sam’s website for some excellent examples of SlowPhotography for a SlowRevolution!

(CNN) — The Industrial Revolution gave us many good things, among them the ability to create large, great cities and feeding enough people to populate them.

But in its aftermath our culture has developed a core focus based on the consumer and not the person as the individual.

As a consequence we have adopted a corporate mind-set which is long on quantity, short on quality, and even shorter on slowness.

Urbanization changes the social organization and patterns of our lives. Our culture’s omnipresent corporate mind-set affects our mind with new challenges, which we as humans have not had to deal with before, leaving many of us feeling alienated from the world as it is.

Today, people all over the world are still flocking to the cities. It is not only a demographic movement but it is about people and families moving in search of a better life.

Many of us have become alienated from the world as it is and millions of people face problems of poverty, overcrowding, pollution, violence, lack of social support and loneliness.

The challenges of urban living and urban growth are not going to be about the “hard issues,” they are going to be about “soft issues” and taking back control over our time.

We’ve forgotten that there is more than one dimension to time. We have something to learn from the ancient Greeks who said time has two dimensions: chronos and kairos.

Chronos is linear time while kairos is the time when special events happen — what the Greeks called “the supreme moment.” This “supreme moment” is “SlowTime!”

To create great cities, we need to promote human interaction based on basic human values.

In his poem “The Paradox of Our Age,” the Dalai Lama says: “We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve built more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communications.”

He is right.

The consumer’s basic needs seem to be: more and faster. Consequently, our postmodern society is often compared to a rat race. But as the American actress and comedian Lily Tomlin once elegantly put it: “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

The postmodern world has brought us more education and more knowledge, but psychologists tell us that a person’s basic needs are belonging, care and love.

To fulfill these needs we have to accept that we are not rats and life is not a race. These values can only be reached if you have slowness in human relations. The Slow Revolution will facilitate a better balance between chronos and “SlowTime.”

History teaches us that unplanned urbanization causes negative consequences for people in cities. To create great cities, we need to promote human interaction based on basic human values.

To achieve this city planners, politicians, architects and real estate developers need to take a walk in the slow lane and focus on solving the challenges of poverty, overcrowding, pollution, violence and lack of social support. And the focus must be on belonging, care and love.

These values can only come through slowness in human relations. Cities built on these principles will affect their citizens in such a way that they will have better health and more opportunities to live a good life — which gives us more time to do the things that are worth doing.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Geir Berthelsen.

What happens if we only measure productivity using chronological time (linear time)? Do we always then become busy? Busy doing what?

Here is an ancient SlowStory explaining the challenge of “busy doing what”:

“There was a farmer that was in need for hiring a lumberjack. Finally he was able to hire a lumberjack. The first day at work the lumberjack was able to cut down 30 trees. The farmer was very happy with his performance. He continued with the same performance for some days until he suddenly dropped down to 15 trees a day. The farmer started to worry, “What is happening?” He finally decided to go and talk to the lumberjack. He asked the lumberjack, “Why do you cut fewer trees now?” He answered, “The axe has become blunt.” The farmer then asked, “Why do you not grind the axe?” The lumberjack answered, “I do not have time to grind the axe because I am too busy cutting down trees.”

Ask any major sportsman, Formula 1 driver, downhill skier or speed skater. If you want to be good at what you are doing, be able to perform the tasks fast, you would need to know how it is performed in “SlowMotion”.

For businessmen it is also important to benefit from slowness in the way that if you do not take time out for reflection and slowness (reflect on how things are in SlowMotion) you will not only be less productive but you will be hazardous to your environment. There is a reason that for example pilots, train drivers etc. have a limited number of hours they can work. It is the same in business it is just that it is more difficult to see, especially if you are in the middle of the rat race.

1. Set your alarm clock always ten minutes before you need to get up (you 
will never run late).
2. Prepare and eat a structured breakfast – for example, from 6.45 – 7.10 
am every day.
3. Let all parties involved – children and parents – talk during the breakfast
 and say what they think the highlight of the coming day will be. Listen.
4. Hug each other before leaving the house.
5. Smile. Try it!
6. Don’t skip lunch.
7. At 2 pm each day, ask yourself: “How am I feeling?”
8. Prepare and eat dinner with the whole family – no television on – and let 
everyone recount the highlights of their day. Listen.
9. Exercise for at least 20 minutes per day. Take a short walk, even if it’s 
raining.
10. Before bed, spend five minutes reviewing the day and plan tomorrow’s
 highlights.

Don’t live life as if you are afraid of being late at your own funeral!

Read Antonella Gambotto-Burke’s revealing, SlowConversations in her new book MOUTH which is a collection of SlowConversations with people like: Edward de Bono, Jordan Belfort, Jack Falcone, Sasha Grey, Sig Hansen, Marilyn Manson, Bette Midler, Chuck Palahniuk and many more including myself.

The interviews are very well connected together as a collection. Antonella has invented a new genre within journalism namely SlowConversation. A interview without a premeditated agenda (she is in no hurry!). A very important new genre in these times of short catchlines and FastConversations.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

– I have to admit that I am not 100% neutral in this book review because from chapter “The idle revolution”, MOUTH, by Antonella Gambotto-Burke

“In 1999, Berthelsen founded the World Institute of Slowness, a Slow think tank. His favorite challenges are those pertaining to change management, stress, creativity, problem solving and process improvements in what he calls our fire fighting culture.”

“The fast will beat the big, but the slow will beat the fast,” he says.

“The jolly Berthelsen notes that our culture´s omnipresent corporate mindset is long on quantity and short on quality. The focus is on the end product, not the process itself. In the west, the man with most toys wins and not the man with the most time to play with the toys. Ironically, the best business thinking often comes from a walk in the slow lane.”

– From chapter “Buttoned Up + Plugged In”, MOUTH, by Antonella Gambotto-Burke

“Throughout the west, a rapidly increasing number of 20- to-40 somethings are beginning to feel the same way. Over the past few years, there has been a 65 per cent increase in the sales of board games, a boom in knitting, and an explosion in the popularity of poetry evenings, obscure lectures and book clubs. Ballroom dancing has been described as enjoying its biggest resurgence since the 1940s, steam train holidays are subject to flurries of bookings, cooking class attendance is surging, books concerning traditional wisdom for men are selling beautifully (Lost Lore, Red Sky at Night), and hundreds of thousands of men are building vintage Skype phones and Secret Knock Gumball Machines. Such men go to bed early, cultivate mustaches and social sensitivities, trap and skeet shoot with muzzle-loading shotguns, keep bees, and – with an earnestness and enthusiasm antithetical to the eternally adolescent Seinfeld generation – marry young. Their conversational topics? The integrity of architecture, comparative literature, heritage roses and philosophy.”

“Fittingly, there has also been a sharp rise in the number of festivals held by Victorian enthusiasts, horse riders in formal Victorian riding dress, and participants in Tweed Rides (cycling events in which riders clad in vintage formal attire vie to win Best Mustache, Most Dapper Chap, and so on). These technologically adroit revivalists do not necessarily recognize themselves as belonging to a movement, but do acknowledge a profound nostalgia for a time in which life pivoted on meaning, rather than net worth.”

Here is the link to the book and free Kindle app:

MOUTH