About New Year's Resolutions and the obsession with efficiency and speed
This year my New Year’s Resolutions are going to look pretty different from the normal list of goals and achievements that I am planning to score in the next 12 months I would normally compile.
It’s gonna be more about attitudes and general directions and less about factual, observable and quantifiable goals.
Yes, I am going against the rules here and what’s about to follow is controversial so, if you are not up to it, maybe better opt for some lighter readings.
Why not the usual New Year’s Resolutions? Because I am tired of lists that are always too ambitious and make me feel like a total failure just a few months down the line. I am done with looking back at them and noticing I am still working towards goals I had for 2017! Even more so, because since I have stopped obsessively compiling lists where I tell myself of the countless things I should be doing to be perfect (because let’s be honest, that’s the implicit assumption behind all those, that you are actually going to improve indefinitely towards perfection) I have started achieving so much more. Yes, I swear by it.
I think that it’s really not about carving in stone our wishes and desires that makes them real. To the contrary. It’s about changing attitudes and prospectives in life. It’s about cooling it down, learning to breathe, stop worrying and obsessing over everything. It’s about accepting that we cannot control everything and that if things sometimes don’t go the way we want it is not necessarily because of some unforgivable flaw we have in us.
Ultimately, it’s about learning to live again. Yes, because in my opinion, we have completely forgot how to do it.
Multitasking, goal settings, to do lists, short and long term objectives, focus strategies, targets, budgets… the list could go on for days, naming the countless children of the 21st century efficiency myth.
A way to simplify the list is one word: overwhelm. The one sentiment that could be easily described as the leitmotif of the first two decades of this century.
Life and business coaching, career advising, emotional coaching, mentoring, master minds… it feels like all of a sudden none of us is capable to handle life anymore and we need someone else, a professional, to do it for us, because in these times of hyper-specialisation you are already good enough if you actually master your area of expertise… life is normally not included.
To me, it feels like we are so busy trying to manage our lives and make them more productive, efficient, valuable and god knows what else that we actually forget to live them. In the craze for improvement to stay afloat the ever more competitive market of business and life our attention is completely focused on the betterment of the improved self whereby the self itself is kind of lost.
I am not saying that none of those lists or professional help is pointless or useless but the obsession we have developed for them certainly is. As I am not saying that we shouldn’t do some planning and apply strategic thinking to achieve our objectives. Just that doing that with the wrong attitude and putting all the focus in planning, goal setting and tasks assignments is contra-productive, failure inducing and overwhelming.
And of course, needless to say, I am saying all this because I have been addicted to the efficiency myth for a very long time and if it were a religion I could certainly attain the privileged place reserved to the most devoted disciples.
In the daily bombardment of inputs and stimulations, the deafening screaming of “the latest” and “the hottest”, “the must dos” and “must sees”, the “you don’t want to miss” and “you must have”, the brainwashing of business and self-improvement books we are left permanently exhausted and depleted.
We talk about slowing down and savouring life because we are all painfully aware that something is seriously wrong in the way we are conducting our lives but often the only way we find to actually do it is to find yet another book, course, workshop or guru to teach us how to do it because, honestly, we don’t have a clue.
We have totally forgot how to live and even more how to be. Our lives are a constant action movie where we do, do and do more and we have become so unfamiliar with being that those moments in which we actually just are, by chance or mistake, they either make us feel guilty or we counteract making sure to fill them with something productive: a podcast, catching up with the latest hits in the music industry, try to watch that movie everyone is talking about while we are waiting to board the plane, listening to the news while we walk because god forbid that something like walking can be considered engaging enough not to allow space for something more useful.
When is the last time we have stopped and watch the water of a river flowing without headphone blasting music or podcasts in our ears or a camera capturing the moment? Can you actually remember taking tea without reading the newspaper, watching the news on TV or scrolling your social media feed on your phone? When is the last time you have sat in a bus, train or airplane without something to read, listen to or watch? When you run errands or do chores aren’t you always trying to multitask? Maybe you take the chance to call that friend you never manage to speak to or mentally go through your daily do-do list….
We run. We rush. We put the foot on the accelerator. We have never done enough in a day. We have never been enough.
We are constantly running out of time, fuelling a social anxiety that is ubiquitous and self sustaining. We are tired and stressed up all the time and if we are not, we start doubting that we might be slacking off.
I mean everyone is busy and if you are not, maybe something is wrong with you and your life, isn’t it? Busy is a culture. Busy is good. Busy makes sure we have little to no time to actually listen to our thoughts. What a blessing when maybe those thoughts might be uncomfortable and might remind us that we don’t really wish to be part of the world competition for efficiency, that we don’t really want to be part of this pantomime of headless chickens we have all become.
When is the last time you took the time to hear yourself thinking?
I don’t know about you but I have to opt out. Not because I am better or trying to differentiate myself from the crowd. But simply because it doesn’t work for me and it hasn’t worked for a long time. It has made me mostly unhappy and fuelled feelings and beliefs of inadequacy and belittlement. I am dedicated and I am thorough. I like to work well, go deep and maybe even go the extra mile. I am often left behind in the race for speed of my contemporaries but I am ok with that. I do my best work and I am my best self when I can take my time and follow my rhythm. I sometimes need to go quiet, stay silent, take a moment. I often just need to be. It took me a long time but thanks to my countless failures at my New Year’s Resolutions and my Goal Lists I had to eventually learnt it. The hard way. Like it or not.
For me it’s not just about baking bread and meditation in the morning. It’s about adopting a new attitude and outlook on life. It’s about accepting that life will continue to rush by and trusting that despite I will feel like I am missing out and I will fear that I’ll be left behind, I will be ok in the end. I will actually be better.
If anyone is interested in moving deeper from the Slow Living Talk that crowds social media conversations, here are a few ideas for an interesting reading:
In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore
Elogio della Lentezza by Lamberto Maffei
The Story of a Snail Who Discovered the Importance of Being Slow by Luis Sepùlveda
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World by Haemin Sunim
