About a month ago, around the time
of the new year, I decided I wanted to work on slowing down. For me, hurrying
is mostly a state of mind. When I’m
hurrying, I keep thinking about the next thing I have to do instead of what I’m
doing now. I keep worrying that I’ll be
late, that I won’t have time to do what I need to do, that I should be doing
something else. I feel like I have to do
everything all at once instead of one thing at a time. Those thoughts make me tense; they lead to an
anxious, slightly irritable, unpleasant body feeling. I hate that feeling and I want to slow down
and stop feeling it as much as I can.
I have to say I’ve
already made a lot of progress with slowing down by using my own harnessing
time tools. Still, sometimes lately I’ve
noticed myself feeling rushed no matter what was going on, as if the feeling
had a life of its own, or had become a habit I was unconsciously holding onto
in my body. So I decided to see if I
could come up with some reliable ways to slow down.
Just
those words -- slow down -- give me a
taste of what I want. When I slow down I
feel notably more peaceful, restful, expansive. It’s like something in me --
some tense tightly held thing, like a big energetic clenched fist -- relaxes,
releases, opens up. It takes energy to
clench a fist, and it takes energy – a lot
of energy – to be constantly straining, rushing, worrying, hurrying. Slowing down is a way to conserve energy, to
rest your mind and your body – your inner energetic self -- while you’re awake
no matter what you’re doing.
One
way to slow down is to plan to do less on any given day. We can make fewer appointments, take whole
days off where we don’t do anything but rest or schedule time for resting among
our other regular stuff. We can simplify
our lives. Those are all beautiful and even
necessary ways to slow down. But I
wanted to find a way to slow down that wouldn’t depend on changing something on
the outside; I wanted to see if I could slow down all the time. I
wanted to see if I could slow down in my head.
Since
I started working on this, I’ve noticed that one thing that helps me slow down
is to be consciously aware of how much time I’ve actually got. This helps me stop focusing on how much time
I don’t have, how much I have to cram into the little time there is, et cetera. When I plan my day every day, I write down what
I have to do, but I also – and here’s the important part – think about from
what time to what time I’m going to do each thing. Doing this can work as an emergency measure at
any time during any day. So if you’re
feeling rushed or like you’ve got too much to do and there isn’t enough time to
do it and/or you don’t know where to start and/or your day just isn’t going
well because you can’t get any traction with all those things you’ve got to do,
here’s what I suggest: Sit down,
consider how much time you’ve actually got to work with – so, say, maybe two
hours, from two to four in the afternoon – and then budget that time,
considering realistically what you can do during it and how much time each
thing is going to take. So you might
decide to clean your kitchen from two to two-thirty, fill out two job
applications on-line from two-thirty to three, and work on the article you’re
writing from three to four. Making the
plan forces you to be realistic about what you can get done (and let go of what
you can’t) and it also forces you to set some priorities. Once you’ve made the plan you can peacefully
work your way through it and at the end of the day you can feel good because,
even if you didn’t get everything done, you got something done.
I’ve gotten into
the habit of planning my whole day that way every day and I absolutely love
it. And when I start to feel rushed, I
make myself stop and look at the clock to see what time it is. Then I look at my plan to see what I’m
supposed to be doing now and what time I have to start doing the next thing on
my list. I might see, for example, that
I have a coaching appointment (I make my living as a writing coach) at
nine-thirty a.m., and it’s nine o’clock now.
Maybe I wanted to do yoga but had started to feel like there wasn’t time
and then I started to rush, to speed up on the inside and/or the outside. But now that I’ve looked at the time I
realize I have a whole half hour and that I can do my yoga – or as much of it
as I can get done – in that half hour.
In that moment I stop rushing and slow down: I’ve got enough time to do yoga. Or maybe I look at the clock and see that
it’s nine-twenty-five and there isn’t time to do yoga before my coaching
appointment. I make a decision – I won’t
do yoga today, or I’ll do it later, between three and three-thirty this afternoon
– I let go of feeling like I have to rush to do it now, and I slow down.
So, slowing-down insight
number one: Feeling rushed is a
by-product of living unconsciously, of being unconscious about time. Slowing down is about being conscious of how
much time there actually is – in the moment, in today. It’s about planning how we’re going to use
our time; it’s about thinking about how much time things take, how
much time we have; it’s even about knowing what time it actually is. This may seem counter-intuitive – slowing
down seems like it should be about something light, free, airy, not about nailing
things down and looking at clocks and so forth. But it makes sense when you
think about it. It makes sense because what you know is a lot less scary than
what you don’t know. When you’re rushing
you’re living in the fear thoughts inside your head – there’s not enough time,
I can’t get anything done, etc. But when
you look at the clock and think about how much time you have and how
you’re going to use that time, then you can relax, slow down, and live in the
real world where things are actually a lot less frightening.
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