The Best of Tortoise Knows Best So Far… (Part 3: The Podbean Days)

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In the final instalment of this “Best of So Far… (up to June 09)” series is the Podbean days. Remember I will be continuing to be using Podbean for podcasts…

Save Your Money, Save the World!
Being Slow is not just about appreciating the time we have, it is a philosophy built on reducing waste. Wasted time, wasted resources, wasted money…

Finding the Space to Be Slow
The slow life is the simple life, is the easy life. To be able to slow down you need to create space to do so.

Slowing downing with the pressure of family and work.
I often here the “reason” that people can’t slow down is because of pressures of work and family…

De-clutter your mind to give you space to slow down.

Part 1: Capture

Part 2: Chunking

Part 3: Why?

Part 4: Lets Get Creative!

Part 5: Needs

Part 6: Shoulds

A Time Out, Practical Idling Number 1 – A Tea Break
The first (and so far only) entry into an infrequent series on “Practical Idling”…

2 Surprisingly Slow Books

1 – “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey

2 – “Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity” by David Allen.

How Slowing Down Can Make You (Appear) Psychic
The title says it all!

Mindfulness

Part 1: An Introduction

Part 2: Do Nothing

Part 3: A Simple Meditation

I will be continuing this series very soon…

Well, that is it for the “Best of So Far…” series and new posts will start again next week.

SC

Celebrating Saint Monday

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(this is a re-post from my previous blog at deckchairdiaries.wordpress.com, but since I have moved blogs a few times since then and a lot of you are new readers, and this is the first time I have mentioned it on this new slow blog, I thought it would be easier to repost it here than keep linking back to it – I hope Google isn’t too upset with the repeated content…)

st_monday2

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

Saint Monday is often ascribed to the regimentation of working class life which occurred with industrialisation (before then people could pick and choose their own working hours) around the end of the seventeenth century, it waned to nothing during by the mid nineteenth century. Payday was typically Saturday, and therefore workers often had spare money on Monday and didn’t need to work, choosing more leisure time over higher incomes. 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.

I am very great believer (and have been for years, even before I got into all this slow stuff) 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, go celebrate St Monday, skive, promote the 4-day work week!

SC

For more detail on Saint Monday read:

  • Tom Hodgkinson, “In defence of skiving”, New Statesman, 30 August 2004 (also Tom’s books, including “How to be Idle” and “The Idlers Diary 2009”)
  • Douglas A. Reid, “The Decline of Saint Monday”, in: Essays in Social History: Volume 2