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THIS IS A SLOW BLOG. It is updated when I have something to say, rather than trying to say something just to update the blog. Learn more about Slow Blogging here. Since this is a Slow Blog, may I suggest you subscribe by RSS by clicking here, or subscribe to receive email updates by clicking here (to learn more about RSS click here for an FAQ).

As promised to all of those that wanted to attend my talk last Saturday (31st October) at the Vision for Living Festival in Cardiff, but couldn’t make it (and for those that attended and want to hear it again!), the audio is now available as a SlowCast.

This is the first podcast for a long time! I will discuss SlowCasting in more details in a future entry or podcast…

Click here to go to my podcast site, or click here to subscribe via iTunes.

Matt

SlowCast Episode 9: Muses and Saint Monday

You can here the news SlowCast here, or subscribe in iTunes here.

Below is a transcript:

Once again a month seems to have passed since I last produced a Slow cast, it is certainly not because I have been being tardy. Far from it. I wish I had!

I have been busy, busy, busy (and those of you that have been reading my most recent blog entries will know that being busy is very different to being productive).

This is no way for an idler to behave!

Between this post and last I have been on a very steep learning curve. I have been teaching myself a lot of techie stuff so that I can take much more of my online activity into my own hands without relying on other people. I have done this for a couple of reasons, but mainly to save money…

I have never made an excuse or avoiding stating the fact that I do this for a living. I am a full time coach and trainer who has turned to helping people slow down. So, please, just for a moment excuse a quick advert for my upcoming stuff.

I have decided to bite the bullet and put on some seminars this autumn, they will be held in Birmingham in the UK and are £55 per seminar (which are a whole day.

Welcome to the Slow Life on the 10th October is a general introduction to the history, principles and philosophy of the Slow Movement including practical advice and tips to help you start (or continue to Slow Down)

Finding time to be Slow on the 7th November is about Time management, the Slow Way! The biggest excuse I find from people is that they don’t have the time to slow down. This day will talk you through a tried and tested process to get everything you need get done more easily and quickly so you can find the time to be slow.

And finally…

“Zen and the Art of Going Slowly” – A Day of Mindfulness on the 21st November. Which is exactly what it says! Slow is about savouring the minutes not counting them. But how much attention do you really pay to the present moment?

Present moment awareness is at the core to the Slow philosophy and in this day you will learn ways to be more mindful in your day-to-day life (without needing to spend hours contemplating your navel – unless you want to of course!)

And talking of work and money. One of the reasons I have been working on a lot of web stuff is to set up some “muses”. I was inspired by 2 things: Tim Ferriss’s excellent book “The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich” and by the “Afterward” in the recent Edition of the New Escapologist (also inspired by the The 4-hour Work Week) (If you don’t read the New Escapologist I highly recommend it).

And whilst I am on the subject, a new Idler is out: Issue 42 Smash the System. It has changed and matured a bit in this incarnation and now is an annual rather than biannual publication that concentrates on being a collection of thought provoking essays rather than the lighter hearted magazine it used to be.

Anyway back to what I was talking about, inspired by the “The 4-hour Work Week” and the New Escapologist I have been setting up a Muse.

A Muse is essentially automated small business capable of generating a desired level of income. With a muse you set things in motion and then the business should be able to run itself with minimum input from you (hence the “4 hour work week”) freeing up your time to concentrate on higher pursuits (remember being Slow is not about being Lazy, it is about pursuing what you want to do).

This is where the Internet has really come into it’s own, It would have been very difficult to create muse even 10 years ago!

The New Escapologist suggests creating a muse that delivers £356 per week because, according to them, in his book “Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More”, John Naish suggests that the secret to material contentment is to earn on or slightly above the average earning-level of your country of residents (in the UK that is £18,000 or £355 a week and the New Escapologist has added a pound to be nice).

It doesn’t mean you need to give up work all together, but it creates that safety net of a regular income that will allow you to do what you want, whether that is travel, do volunteer work, go back to college, set up your own business, re-train, change job/career, go part time, move, write, craft, paint, become a lord or lady of leisure and take long strolls in the country. It gives you that freedom (but also security) to finally slow down!

So, that is what I have been working on, my Muses! I have set up 2 so far, an audio programme “Welcome to the Slow Life” giving more details of how you can start slowing down. You can have a look at www.WelcomeToTheSlowLife.com and an ebook for people who want to set up their own coaching or therapy practice (something I have been “unofficially” doing for some time), called (originally) “The Professional Practice Builders Handbook” which you can find at www.ThePracticeBuilderHandbook.com

I am currently struggling putting together a couple of new programmes, and been suffering a little bit of creative block.

But it hasn’t all been work, work, work….
Oh no.

I have also been out and about a lot: a couple of trip to sunny London, and a trip to Bristol to see the Banksy exhibition, which is just fantastic and I urge you to go and see it before it closes…

But talking of working. I have long been a great believer of a Four Day Working Week, being a bit of an Idler at heart, long before I formalised it by coming across The Idler and Carl Honore’s excellent book “In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed“, in fact, I recall conversations with my boss Charles at my second Proper Job at the age of 19 as junior accounts clerk in a carpet factory (that was fun, fun, fun) discussing exactly such a thing (Charles was somewhat of an Idler himself and considered a job a necessary evil and treated it that way!)

So, when I first came across Saint Monday in Tom Hodgkinson’s book “How to be Idle” I was astounded that this idea of a 4-day workweek had been around for centuries in an almost formal way. So much so it had a name (and has it’s own Wikipedia Entry! Don’t believe me? Check it out!)

Since then I have campaigned for a return of Saint Monday and each week on my blog, place a holding post on Monday stating I am celebrating Saint Monday and don’t do any “work” that day, although I will often write or read or research.

I have a short post on the blog I link back to that explains Saint Monday in more detail but thought, for you non-blog reading podcasters out there and to those blog readers who want a little but more detail I would dedicate this SlowCast to a little bit more of a detailed history and description of Saint Monday.

The thing that really got me when I found out about Saint Monday was that there have been a number of academic papers written on it! I had to PAY to get hold of them!

So, for this SlowCast I draw on “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766 -1876” by Douglas A Reid, as well as Tom Hodgkinson’s “In defence of skiving” article in the New Statesman.

Saint Monday is the tradition of absenteeism on a Monday (Saint Tuesday is the less common extension of this to a Tuesday)

The tradition of taking Monday (unofficially) off has been common among craft workers since at least the seventeenth century.

To understand Saint Monday you have to understand the context in which it came about. During the industrial revolution there came greater pressure on workers to adhere to a timetable, whereas before they would work as and when they wanted to get the work they needed to get done, done. But as the industrial revolution rolled on they were expected more and more to work to shifts.

Of course the old habits of working as when they wanted was hard to break and, especially in Birmingham (my adopted home city I was very pleased to find out) the workers rarely paid attention to shift hours and continued to work as and when they pleased. The demands of the clock were yet often subordinated to the desire for sociability:

“…the industry of the people was considered extraordinary, their peculiarity
of life remarkable. They lived like the inhabitants of Spain, or after the custom of the Orientals. Three or four o’clock in the morning found them at work. At noon they rested; many enjoyed their siesta; others spent their time in the workshops eating and drinking, these places being often turned into taprooms and the apprentices into pot boys; others again enjoyed themselves at marbles or in the skittle alley. Three or four hours were thus devoted to “play”; and then came work again till eight or nine, and sometimes ten, the whole year through.”

(Birmingham Journal 26 Sept. 1855, “Hints for a History of Birmingham”)

It was on this custom and working practices that Saint Monday was born.

The prime supporters of Saint Monday were often the higher skilled and therefore, better paid craftsmen and artisans. High piece-rates could provide good wages for skilled men, but they more often elected to take a moderate wage and extensive leisure.

But even the lowest paid workers would try and support the custom and as late as 1842 it was said of factory owners “that they often have great difficulty in getting their men to work on Mondays, unless by that time they have expended the earnings of the previous week”

At it’s peak at around 1840, business owners in some industries had become accustomed to workers not arriving on Monday, and were willing to tolerate it, even putting on provisions for entertainment including rail journeys, plays and games such as cricket. Entrepreneurial-minded leisure facilities such as the railways and botanical gardens would offer special prices on admission on Mondays and noticed swelling working class visitors.

Not surprisingly, business leaders found Saint Monday (and all it represented in irregularity and insobriety) an irksome, not to say, a ruinous characteristic of the labour force! And undertook a programme of publicly denouncing Saint Monday, bribery, coercion (offering half holidays on Saturday  – which were slowly eroded after the eradication of Saint Monday) and threats (locking workers out on Tuesday who did not come in on Monday, stopping them from working, thereby earning) by business owners. But…

“Astonishingly, even the cultural attitudes which had sustained the Saint Monday of the eighteenth century survived in some measure into the 1860’s and beyond. It seemed that the “inward notation of time” of heavy steel-toy workers of the 1860’s was still oriented to the task (or to leisure) rather more than to the clock. These piece-workers would come “what time they please”; perhaps in summer they will come at 5 and leave by dinnertime”. On Mondays very few went at all.”

Eventually though, Saint Monday waned to nothing during by the mid nineteenth century.

I am very great believer that in these days of the modern technology we have, it could finally live up to the promise of it being “a labour saving devise” and free us from some of our work, meaning a 4 day working week is totally possible! OK, it only gives you one extra day a week, but 1 day is better than nothing.

So, join the Saint Monday celebration, skive off on a Monday, petition you boss for an extra day off, if you are business owner, give your workers that time off and let then enjoy themselves! Why not even take them somewhere nice? Promote the 4-day work week!

Or am I being too idealistic? I dunno. Maybe Saint Monday is somewhat unattainable (in the short term) but we have to do something to reverse the growing trend of longer working hours, which are not productive and are damaging to our physical, mental and social health…

Thanks for listening, until next time try and celebrate Saint Monday in some way!

Slow Cast Episode 8: Manners Maketh the Idler RE-UPLOADED

Oops! My apologies for the SlowCast uploaded last Thursday, it didn’t seem to get past the 2 minute mark! Many thanks to the people who have sent emails and comments letting me know. I have reuploaded the SlowCast, and it should hopefully work OK now.

You can listen to the full podcast here:

http://slowcoach.podbean.com/2009/06/29/slow-cast-episode-8-manners-maketh-the-idler-re-uploaded/

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Manners Maketh the Idler

This is a transcript of the most recent SlowCast “Episode 8 – Manners Maketh the Idler”. To hear the podcast please click here, or subscribe in itunes by clicking here.

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Continuing what appears to be the never ending series on “How to Be Slow In a Fast Environment” which I am thinking of re-titling “How to be an Idler”?, or just :How to be Slow wherever”,

The series up until now has been looking at some physical tricks that you can do to Slow yourself down, especially the importance of relaxing, breathing properly and correcting your posture.

These three areas are essential and very useful. Where your body goes your mind will follow and visa versa. It reminds me of an old Charlie Brown cartoon:

Charlie Brown is all hunched and bent over and one of his friends (I forget which one) asks him what he is doing and he says that he is in his “depressed stance”, because it is hard to be depressed when you stand up straight and hold your head up high! Experiment with your posture, see what happens when you hunch, when you slouch, when you stand up straight. See how it changes your mood, how it changes what you think about.

Because now we are going to start looking at more psychological or behavioural ways to start slowing down and the first one I have decided to talk at you about is Manner.

Ill manners are something of a pet hate of mine, so I may descend into a minor rant, if I do, I apologies…

To begin with we need to know what manners actually are. We often confuse manners for etiquette, but really they are 2 separate and very different things: manners are inclusive, etiquette is exclusive.

The journalist AA Gill describes the difference perfectly as:

“Etiquette is an arcane list of arbitrary and pointless conventions that are laid down as pratfalls for the aspirational, as an amusement for the unlovable. It’s etiquette that points out to the girl next to you that she’s drinking from the finger bowl; it’s manners that insist you drink from yours to put her at ease…”

The perfect example of manners and politeness to me is a scene near the end of the film Love Actually, where Colin Firths character has flown to Portugal to propose to the woman of his dreams, there is one taxi outside the airport and he and an elderly lady both head for it. Even though he gets there first and is in a rush he STILL offers the taxi to the elderly lady. Manners are something you should do, because they are the right thing to do, even if it inconveniences you…

Our current fast, hare-brained society has little time or space for manners, we are stressed, solipsistic and self centred, all trying to get everything we want or need to get done as quickly as possible, and other people are often just an annoyance.

Just look at road rage for example. Or as another personal note, have you ever been on the tube in London? People jostle and push and don’t mind being pushed around, but you turn round and apologies and they look like they will kill you! They have been forced to engage, to come outside their own little world and they don’t like it!

We confuse manners to being somehow weak or wimpy. How did that happen?? Just because you are polite doesn’t turn you into a doormat or a pushover. Far from it.

You see we use the word “assertive” a lot nowadays. And we often confuse assertiveness with just being rude. You can be polite and still be firm, in fact, it is often easier to get your own way if you are polite, as we will see in a bit….

Making the effort to be polite FORCES you to slow down. It makes you pay attention to who or what is going on around and you become more aware and mindful, more switched on and present in the moment, we see, feel hear, smell and taste the now much more. And that is what Slow is all about; savouring the minutes instead of counting them…

So, how can you be polite? Well we will start with the easy things, the basics and we will work our way up to more advanced manners (it is always good to start small).

Start by smiling. Just smile, smile at everyone, smile when you talk (even if it is on the phone – people can tell you know), smile when you walk, maybe whistle a jolly little tune (if you can whistle, I can’t and it frustrates me!!)

Secondly say “please” or “thank you” (I am sure your parents told you this), ask for something, say “please”, someone does something for you; serves you at a shop, holds a door open, say “thank you”. Loudly! Don’t just mutter it. Smile, make eye contact and say in a cheery voice thank you!

You probably do this already right? Most of the time at least? Well do it all of the time, even if you are in a bad mood (I have found making myself be polite, even when I don’t want to or can’t be bothered, can and will changed my mood instantly).

So, next? Say good morning or good afternoon to everyone. AND MEAN IT! Don’t just mumble it to the receptionist on your way to the office. Ready to make it a bit more interesting? Ask them how they are, listen and respond. Have something more interesting than “fine” (but short, no one likes a bore) to say when asked.

Here’s a trickier one; learn and remember peoples names and USE IT when you talk to them.

Right the next and final step (for now), do things for people, let a car out of a side road when sitting in traffic, offer to carry something for someone. Start with something simple and work up to offering more and more help. The key here is to offer to do it EVEN if it puts you out (remember the Love Actually example?).

Make the effort to be super polite, sickeningly so for the next few days, see what happens to you (how you act and feel and how your life changes) and to the people around you. The reason for being overly polite for a few weeks is because of the idea of contrast. Think about driving down a motorway and seventy and then seeing how slow thirty feels when you get off, or (if you are a gym goer) lifting a heavier weight than you want to lift, then lifting the actually (lighter) weight and feeling just HOW MUCH More lighter it feels. If you are overbearingly polite and well mannered for a couple weeks, a reasonable and sensible level of politeness will feel easy, natural (and fun)…

I have a rule, a game I play with myself when I am out and about. I want to leave everyone I interact with a little bit happier than before I saw them. Flirt with the grumpy waiter or waitress, tell the person in the post office a joke, offer your place in the queue to someone who looks flustered.

I like to think of this as like dropping pebbles in a pond, I imagine the ripples flow out and how this tiny action could change someone’s life in a big way…

Maybe you smile at the lady in the shop and make her feel better about herself, so the goes home in a good mood rather than a bad one for change, so treats her husband differently and than one little spark could save their marriage. Who knows??

Incidentally, on a slightly selfish level (and you may like this), politeness is it’s own reward. By being well mannered, polite and friendly I have got discounts, upgrades on planes and hotels, jumped queues and all other manner of things.

Oh and smiling releases endorphins (or as Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP calls them “endolphins” – I like that image, these happy, good feeling producing dolphins swimming round your brain!), even if you do an insincere smile, and those lovely chemicals make you feel happier, more energised and alert.

And, I am pretty sure that being polite will make you more optimistic and optimists often live longer and healthier lives.

And it is good for your Karma…

So, see, manners are there own reward. Do them for your self if no one else!

Of course, the irony is that the first and last rule of manners is that they are not compulsory and if you have manners you would forgive people who don’t… So if someone is rude to you, cuts you up or in any other way offends you, just smile and forgive them. It is not worth the hassle…

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Slow Cast Episode 7: An Interlude, How to Slow Down Again

In this, very belated, new podcast, the Slow Coach takes a break and talks about what do to if you find yourself speeding up when you want to be slowing down…

Get it Here or click on the link on the homepage.
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