International Day of Slowness
by Matt Caulfield on June 22, 2010
in Practical Idling
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According to “The Slow Society” yesterday (21st June – the Summer Solstice) was the “International Day of Slowness“. I only just found out about it (what do you expect really? This is about “slow” after all…). It is one of several “International Days of Slowness” I have come across. The great thing about the Slow Movement is that is not organised control or dictated by one central body and is a cultural movement by groups of individuals and organisations around the globe (the Slow Movement is essentially anarchic in it’s approach which is something I like about it), so there are several organisations that exist that promote the Slow Philosophy and each have their own calendars.
It is nice to have a day devoted to something, as the collective focus and energy of all the people involved can have a real effect, but if you missed it (like I did), then there is no need to worry or beat yourself, you can have you own “Personal Day of Slowness” whenever you want.
In fact, isn’t the aim to have a “Day of Slowness” every day anyway? But what I would recommend is to set aside a day every week (or month, or whenever you can manage it for now) to really slow down, almost grind to a halt in fact (isn’t this what Sunday’s used to be? Before our 24 hour, 7 days a week hare-brained culture really took over?)
Robert Wringham in his most recent Escapologists Diary (Escapology and Slow make good bed fellows) discusses a day he recently stayed in due to the rain (you can read it here), which, to me, encompasses an ideal “Slow Day” (although, obviously the content can change to suite your tastes and needs).
So, how to do go about having a slow day? And what do you do in it?
1. “Go Dark”
Switch off your phone, Internet, TV and radio (apart from Radio 3 or some other soothing sounds.). We are bombarded for almost 24 hours a day with news, information and demands. As little as 15 years ago, very few of us had the Internet or mobile phones and we got on perfectly fine. Remind yourself that technology is your servant not your master by switching it all off once in awhile.
2. Go for a Stroll
We think at walking speed, yet life forces us to think and act much, much faster. No wonder we are stressed, flustered and feel under constant pressure to “keep up”. Walking is not only excellent form of idle exercise, it is a way to reconnect with and slow down our thought process, contemplate and ponder. Who knows what ideas you will have or what amazing insights you will uncover.
And whilst you are out and about…
3. Look Around!
Look at the beauty that surrounds you, pay attention to nature, watch the clouds and make shapes in them, really notice the things you look at every day, but rarely see. We only have this moment, yet how often do we truly live in it? How often are lost in a memory or a daydream of the future. Be in the now, this is all there is.
4. Have a Nap
There is nothing more energising for the mind, body and spirit than a quick nap in the afternoon. You know, that lull after lunch where you are not sure what to do next and feel a bit sleepy as your body digests its food. Go one, have a kip…
5. Read a Good Book
How many books have you got on your bookshelf that you have always wanted to read, but somehow never got round to? Pick one, get comfy and lose yourself in it.
A friend once told me that you should always read. If you don’t read you only get to live one lifetime, if you read you live thousands.
6. Cook and Appreciate All the Food You Eat
How often do you heat up pre-prepared food and then wolf it down whilst sat in front of the TV? There is something liberating about cooking your own food from scratch and then taking the time to appreciate it. Own cooked food tastes better and is healthier (and often cheaper to make) than pre-prepared stuff. Take some time to plan your meal, cook it and then sit and eat it at the table, not in front of the TV and really savour it.
If that is a bit too much at this current stage in your slowing down process, then just bake your own bread, it is very simple, cheap and easy to do and incredibly satisfying.
7. Catch up with Old Friends, the Old-fashioned Way
With email, text, instant messenger and facebook it has never been easier to stay in touch with someone. But when was the last time you really connected with your friends? Had a good sit down and a chinwag? Modern technology gives us the illusion of being connected with someone without actually being connected.
So, invite your friends round for a cuppa, go to the pub, drink and be merry, or make a telephone call (from your landline…) if you can’t get to see them face-to-face.
8. Write a Letter
Feeling a bit adventurous? Can’t get hold of your friend right now? They live too far away to pop round? Then write them a letter!
Emails are a great way to send instant messages. They are fine for business or quick bits of organisation or fact finding, but can you put a pressed flower in an email? Can you seal it with a loving kiss? Letters imbue part of the writers soul onto the paper; the effort and ritual of finding some nice paper, a good quality pen and, with your best handwriting, commit your thoughts and feelings to paper gives a letter something an email can never have.
And you can get it delivered anywhere in the country, next day, for less than 50p, or anywhere in the world, in just a few days, for the cost of a pint! Isn’t that great value? Isn’t it worth it?
Of course, these are just suggestions, you may have your own ideas of what you would do on your slow day (and if you tried to do all these things you would be pretty busy!). Really you can do anything, as long the intention is to do it in a Slow way, to be mindful, unflustered and unhurried, to be frugal and use just enough resources (time, energy and money) to do each thing. And to enjoy it! Slow isn’t about being puritanical or pious! To me Slow is mindset that leads to a new lifestyle, do things with the right intention behind it and everything becomes “Slow”.
Matt
The Lighter Side of Slow
by Matt Caulfield on August 27, 2009
in Practical Idling
I remember hearing the late great Robert Anton Wilson talking about the term “Hilaritas”, which is derived from a Greek word, meaning to “live joyfully” and was supposedly used to describe the gods. You could tell they were a god because the had “Hilaritas”.
Humour is incredibly important to the Slow mindset. Humour has power. If you can laugh at something you remove it’s control over you. It is why satire is considered so potent and we used comical propaganda during WWII.
I remember once, when I was still working as an NLP therapist, talking to a group of other therapists and we were chatting about some of our work that we had done. All of a sudden, one of the more earnest therapists just lashed out and said to me “I think you are disgusting! I can’t believe you treat your clients in such a way, you show no respect to them, making fun of them all the time”. I was a bit taken aback, but then explained calmly and gently that I took my clients 100% seriously and treated them with the utmost respect, but what I never did was take their “problems” seriously. As, taking a problem seriously often makes it worse, and if you can get your clients to truly laugh that their problems that can often be enough to make them go away (the problem, not the client!).
In the Slow movement I often meet quite a few earnest people, who take slowing down very seriously. They are somewhat evangelical and critical of other people who do not conform to their understanding of the world (and their understanding of how we should slow down). A friend and I often refer to them as “lentil knitters” and poke a bit of light hearted fun at them. This attitude isn’t helping at all and is often counter productive as turns people off the Slow Movement. Besides, the Slow Movement has no leaders or structure, it is a collection of people embracing the idea of slowing down and rejecting the ethos of “faster is best”, in all it’s forms, there is (as far as I can tell) no “right” or “wrong” way to do it!
So, in this post I thought I would explore the more humorous (yet still important) side of Slowing Down.
The Idler
I have mentioned the Idler here a few times. It has recently re-invented itself in a more serious guise as a journal of radical thought, but before then it was a tongue in cheek look at the life of loafing. In both its guises I highly recommend it!
The New Escapolosgist
A new periodical in a similar vein to the Idler. Edited by the Glasgow flâneur Robert Wringham, its purpose is to help its readers “flee the humdrum spreadsheet of prescribed reality into an exciting world of one’s own invention.”
The Church of the Latter Day Dude (Dudeism)
Inspired by the antics of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, in the Coen brother film “The Big Lebowski”, they espose a laidback lifestyle. In it’s own words “Come join the slowest-growing religion in the world – Dudeism. An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh…lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you’d like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we’ll help you get started. Right after a little nap…”
The Church of the Subgenius
The aim of the subgenius is to attain SLACK, the “sense of freedom, independence, and original thinking that comes when you achieve your personal goals.” Although a parody of the major cults and religions, the idea if slack is an excellent one!
Discordianism
Similar to The Church of the Subgenius. The Discordian movement is either a “religion disguised as a joke, or a joke disguised as a religion”. It has no central body as one of the basic tenants is that “us Discordians must stick apart”, but you can learn more at it’s Wikipedia page here. Discordianism reminds us not to take anything too seriously and to just let go.
If anyone has any other lighthearted Slow organisations out there, please let me know.
Matt
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SlowCast Episode 9: Muses and Saint Monday
by Matt Caulfield on July 22, 2009
in SlowCasts
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 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
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
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
So, when I first came across Saint Monday in Tom Hodgkinson’s book “How to be Idle
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!
The Idler and The New Escapologist: 2 Publications of Interest.
by Matt Caulfield on June 24, 2009
in Practical Idling
I apologies, I don’t have time to write a proper entry today, so I just wanted to draw your attention to 2 periodicals that I read regularly and highly recommend:
The Idler
I have been reading the Idler for 2 years now, it was the first inspirations for me to take up the idle or slow life.
The Idler is a yearly publication devoted to promoting its ethos of ‘idle living’ and all that entail, founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney. Following in the footsteps of Samuel Johnson’s collection of essays and Jerome K. Jerome’s popular periodical, the concept behind The Idler is intended as a riposte to the idea of the ‘work ethic’.
Idler 42: Smash the System has just been released. The new cloth-bound 350 page annual Idler, a collection of radical essays with contributions from Alain De Botton, Penny Rimbaud, John Mitchinson, Jay Griffiths, Paul Kingsnorth, Oliver James.
For more details and to buy go to www.idler.co.uk
The New Escapologist
I have only recently come across this new publication, it is only on issue 2.
It is produced by the Robert Wringham and its purpose is to help its readers “to flee the humdrum spreadsheet of prescribed reality into an exciting world of one’s own invention.” The second issue (out now) is titled “The War Against Cliché” and offers tips for cultivating your own unique self and shedding received opinion and humbug. A nice practical final page invites readers to send in ideas for businesses that would create a median £356 a week income on just four hours’ work a week (inspired by Tim Ferriss’ excellent book). Go to newescapologist.wordpress.com for more details.
I will be back tomorrow.
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