I retreated to the safe familiarity of my car, closed the door, took a breath and a whirlwind of emotions overcame me. Basically I lost it. For the first time in my life I felt completely out of control … and alone in my chaos. I was swept up in one of the scariest feelings I have ever felt. I couldn't control my breathing, tears flooded down my cheeks, my hands trembled, my eyes were wide as plates. I just didn't know what to do. I froze in this scary moment.
With the clarity that only hindsight affords, I came to recognise the three things that had led me to this moment: I was overconnected, overwhelmed and completely overstimulated. Too many people were wanting too much from me (including myself). I was being crushed by an ever-growing to-do list, living in a state of hyper-arousal, persistently on the edge. Life at full throttle was too much, too full and too frantic. It was no longer working for me. I needed it to stop. One of my favourite mantras is ‘you only get one shot at life'. I had interpreted this as meaning I must do everything and do it now. But it was taking its toll.
As soon as I called a friend I knew I was no longer alone. That frozen moment in the car marked a moment of choice: I could suck it up, take a big deep breath and keep going, or I could see it as a sign, a message, a wake-up call that it was time to make a change, to see things differently and more importantly to do things differently. I had been given an opportunity to take a step back from the chaos and slow down, and that's exactly what I did.
This life-changing experience (it really was) gave me an opportunity to find a calm place within the noise of my life. It forced me to stop and take notice, to reconnect with the side of me I had been suppressing in my wild pursuit of living life to the full, to re-examine what I wanted out of life. This wasn't going to happen through attending a retreat in India or seeking a meditation guru or taking a 90-day trek through the mountains. This, right here, right now, was my opportunity to find calm in the chaos.
Reading this book you will discover that my experience, my story, is not at all unique, that many people yearn for time on their own and for a less complicated life in which they feel in control, at least for a time. That is what this book is for. To help you to see that, rather than being a luxury, slowing down is a necessity, and that it may be the key to helping you live the life you choose.
Part I
The burden of connection
The background hum of the television was mostly drowned out by the whirr of the oven and the ruckus of the kids getting ready for dinner, until a prime-time television news report broke through the noise and caught my attention. A revolutionary new ‘boot camp' had been started in South Korea to help kids as young as eight learn how to play with their peers and take time away from technology. In a first of its kind (other such initiatives have since followed), this residential program brought city kids into a natural setting where they got to run outside, build forts and generally mix with other kids – with no iPad, smartphone or television in sight. The idea was to teach children how to be children again, without technology.
I stood in the kitchen, a tea towel draped over my shoulder, riveted to the story. The screen showed boys aged around 9 to 13 standing in loose formation, bringing to mind a scene from M*A*S*H, the military comedy series from the 1970s. Except these were not recruits in army greens but young boys of every shape and size, most of them not looking at all pleased to be there. Their parents waved goodbye anxiously and drove off, leaving their sons in the hands, not of a stern-looking drill sergeant, but of a middle-aged couple who looked more like office workers than boot camp instructors.
But this was no typical boot camp. It was a camp for troubled youth whose main challenge was an addiction to technology that had impacted their behaviour, their learning and their friendships. At home they were forever sprawled in front of the television or glued to their computer, rudely refusing to do their homework and chores, isolating themselves from their peers. As the story progressed we saw the same young boys climbing trees, jumping into a creek, reading books. To me they looked like … kids, and they were. Except they had lost connection with the childhood joys associated with being outdoors, being creative and playing with real-life friends. Their problem was not simply playing too many computer games; it went deeper. The interviewer asked one young boy how he was finding the program. With eyes downcast and in a soft voice he replied, ‘It's good, but I miss my computer … I didn't think I could live without it'.
As the curry bubbled on the stove behind me, I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. During my career as an occupational therapist I have worked a lot with children with learning, behavioural and developmental challenges. I imagined (or hoped) what I was seeing here was a problem that applied to only a very small demographic of the global community. I knew South Korea was one of the world's most wired nations. But surely this was not a serious issue, big enough and prevalent enough that kids needed to be taken from their parents, forcibly disengaged from their technological devices in order for them to learn to be kids again. Well, it seems I had no idea. The problem for all of us is indeed bigger than I, or any of us, could have imagined, and it is not going away.
Chapter 1
Work–life integration
The challenge of being overconnected and unable to switch off from technology transcends age, race, education and geography, and it doesn't stop with technology. Many of us feel the effects of living life in the fast lane. Our frenetic pace, racing from one meeting to the next and one activity to the next, is affecting our ability to take time out, slow down, switch off and refuel. With our bodies and minds constantly ‘switched on', our health and wellbeing are increasingly paying the price. We are in a state of chronic overconnection, overwhelm and overstimulation. This is a growing global problem.
Searching for slow
In 2004 Canadian journalist and best-selling author Carl Honoré published In Praise of Slow, in which he outlines the sociological and psychological implications of a speed-obsessed culture and warns of the potential negative consequences of our obsession with speed. Honoré traces the history of our relationship with time and asks, ‘Why are we always in such a rush?' and ‘When are we going to slow down?' Arguing that ‘Evolution works on survival of the fittest, not the fastest,' he proposes an alternative way of thinking and living, which he calls ‘the slow revolution'.
To achieve more we do not have to keep pushing ourselves to do more; in fact we are capable of achieving more through doing less. Most people reading this will want to jump immediately to the ‘how to' section. It is a modern-day conundrum: how can we do more by doing less?
To achieve more we do not have to keep pushing ourselves to do more; in fact we are capable of achieving more through doing less.
In Praise of Slow was written more than ten years ago. This way of thinking seemed then to be espoused only by hippies living in the mountains who were rarely in touch with the ‘real world'. How times have changed! Roll forward ten years and it seems the slow revolution has started to find its way into the consciousness of people you would least expect to have time for it. Executives in boardrooms are searching for ways to integrate slow living into their fast-paced, demand-driven lives, and as suggested in the Korean news report, parents are embracing the slow revolution for their children.
We want to have it all – a fat pay packet, a successful business, prestige during the week, and the weekend spent stand-up paddle boarding, sipping lattes and coaching the soccer team. To have it all, though, we need to make some changes to how we are living. Back in 1948, in his best-seller How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie spoke of the importance of living a life free of worry about the constraints of time and other pressures. His message evidently remains compelling, as the book continues to be one of the most recommended business self-help books almost seventy years later.
If we have known for a long time, having been warned by such authoritative voices as these, that living life constantly ‘switched on' is negatively affecting our physical and psychological wellbeing, then why haven't we taken notice?
Part of the answer lies in the context of the rapid pace of change in our world. The changes that have resulted