Today I went to Starbuck’s and hung out with a bagel from Noah’s next door and a mocha. Although I was experiencing anxiety about being away from my PC – I did have my Treo however – I resisted the temptation to wolf down my bagel and rush back home to finish all the stuff I had to do.
Instead, I savored the calm moment of being there at Starbuck’s, reading some of my recent magazines that I got this last week, ripping pictures out of them for my coaching process (see my coaching blog), and sipping my mocha while listening to my iPod.
Steadily, I enter the realm of “slowness”. I just bought the book “In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed” by Carl Honore. I am eager to dig into this book as my life is just so ridiculously full right now and I need to make sure I do not overload myself inadvertently. I have lots of interests and really need to evaluate what’s most important, what I’m really committed to, and what can be done later.
So many of us veterans of the dot-com years can’t help but live in the hyper-fast world of information overload and shrinking deadlines and getting it done yesterday. But yet, we never stop to listen to a friend or my child, really absorb the richness of the world through our senses, or just sit and think deeply about a topic or our lives.
Even now, my favorite moments with friends are just sitting down and having a focused one-on-one conversation with them. I abhor conversations in group settings; they inevitably boil down to quick snippets of “how are you?” and “what’s up” and then that’s it before you move to the next person.
Back to Starbucks: So I still hit the Send/Receive button on SnapperMail on my Treo every now and then. Can’t break the habit that quickly…! But I do know that I am enjoying the relaxed nature of slowing down and plan to do this much more.