Not So Fast, by
David Hochman
Steve West found this in Southwest Airlines’ Spirit Magazine, April 2013 Issue. The following was taken from an article
called Not So Fast by David Hochman. This is not from the perspective of
Jewish/Christian Sabbath keeping, but it is right on track with our REST
series!
…we decided to put the brakes on everything for a while. For
30 days—a month I dubbed “Slowvember”—we would focus on doing things well
rather than fast, on making human connections instead of electronic ones, and
on getting more out of life by doing much, much less. In all our endeavors, the
Hochman family would abide by the following S-L-O-W principles:
S was for “Savor,”
the idea being to truly appreciate the passing hours and minutes rather than
just count them. Instead of freaking out when Sebastian splashed water all over
the bathroom floor that first night, I imagined myself looking back on the
scene 10 years in the future. It’s a trick social scientists call “reframing,”
and it instantly made Sebastian’s drippy bubble-bath beard not just
entertaining but heart-achingly poignant.
L was “Listen to your inner clock.” In a world of fast
talkers, fast drivers, and fast tempers, it’s essential to maintain your own
ideal speed. Some moments demand quick action and thinking. Most don’t. When I
caught my mind racing or my foot pushing too hard on the gas pedal, I slowed
myself by silently reciting the alphabet backward. Ruth began taking a
one-thing-at-a-time approach instead of making dinner and watching TV and
talking on the phone and checking Sebastian’s homework at the same time.
O—“Others before technology”—became my personal Mount
Everest. No texting under the dinner table, no checking email at night or
before breakfast, no TV when we could be talking, and, horror of horrors, no
Facebook or Twitter, period. Those time sucks were draining more precious time
than I cared to admit, and toggling between real-life tasks and silly updates
was causing productivity losses economists refer to as “switching costs.” Many
of us are losing, apparently. During May 2011, Americans spent a combined total
of 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook alone, according to Nielsen. The key word
here being “alone.”
W was the ultimate test of every activity and experience:
“Will it matter a year from now?” This not only made me feel better about
little annoyances (“Have a nice day, Mr. Telemarketer!”) and bigger ones, like
when my hard drive crashed during week two, it also helped sharpen
decision-making. My father suffers from Parkinson’s disease, a type of slowness
he never would have elected. One day, when he pointed to a newspaper ad for a
visiting Cirque du Soleil show and said, “It’d be nice to see this with you and
Sebastian,” my quick reaction was, “Oh, boy, this is going to be complicated
and expensive with an 8-year-old and a wheelchair in tow.” My slower, wiser
conclusion as I picked up the phone to order tickets: “Of course this will
matter a year from now.”
You can read the full article here. http://www.spiritmag.com/features/article/not_so_fast/.
