It’s been an unusually busy year for me—taking on a full year of both study and work. Feels like I’ve been mastering the art of juggling tasks and life. But even though, objectively, there are more things to get done, it’s not like I don’t have the time to do them. It’s my relationship with time that counts—the story I’m telling myself about how much of it I actually have.
The story often goes something like: “I don’t have enough time.” or “there is too much to do”. But stories like these carries weight. It blinds me to the fact that I can often get done in ten minutes what, on another day, might take me an hour. What is that? It’s not hyper-productivity. It’s just… doing the thing in front of me, without resistance. Just doing it—without obsessing over how it turns out.
It’s exactly like this writing. I could easily say, “I have no time for it,” with all the deadlines stacked up around me—but that’s not really true. When I’m just in it, it gets done in its own way. Not because I forced it, not because I nailed it, but because I didn’t get in the way of it. What I think I’m starting to learn is not to worry so much about the outcomes. There will be failures and shortcomings. Doing the thing that’s yours to do doesn’t insulate you from imperfection. But maybe those imperfections are something to celebrate. They’re proof we’re alive. That we’re actually in the business of living.
And that’s not so much about getting somewhere—though sure, there are many places to get to. It’s more about being here. Its receptive, its listening, receiving and allowing that to move something in us. What wants to move beyond our thinking of things .. what if we did more of that ?
But some parts of us just don’t know how to not be in fast gear. Those parts are carrying beliefs that might not even be ours. We inherit them—from ancestry, from culture, from the world. The idea that we need to keep doing, being busy to prove our worth. We often carry these beliefs without even knowing it. And for those parts of us that are trying to hold it all together, slowing down can feel like dying.
“Busyness is not a proxy for productivity. It’s a sign that your time is being used carelessly.”
— Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
The big misconception is that slowing down means moving slower. Not true. You might even find yourself moving faster. It’s a state of mind.