Slow

Who proudly looks back at their old to-do lists at the end of the year and thinks: “Wow, I tackled so many tasks this year”?

Part of the activation energy required to start any task comes from the picture you get in your head when you imagine doing it. It may not be that going for a run is actually costly; but if it feels costly, if the picture in your head looks like a slog, then you will need a bigger expenditure of will to lace up.

Slowness seems to make a special cont... See more

The study, published today in Nature, is based on findings from human brains, mice, and worms and suggests that excessive activity in the brain is linked to shorter life spans, while suppressing such overactivity extends life.

Why are we assuming that people want more, faster? Has anyone ever said, “if only I could make unlimited presentations”?

What if we want to craft one presentation, but do it beautifully?

Speed and efficiency are the promise of modernity. But speed and efficiency are all destination and no journey. And it is journey that gives life meaning.

we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of claiming it.

Pathological impatience. What an accurate way to describe the ails of our time.

You couldn’t just roll down the street leaving huge piles of garbage everywhere you go, making life slower for everyone as they climb over your mountains of junk, just to get on with their life. You’d feel bad about it, right?

That’s how I feel about the digital things we put out into the world: websites, apps, and files.

In a world of fast content incentivized by advertising-based attention-hacking business models, being slow and considered is a superpower.