Slow is not bad
In most things (barring the centre), there is always a counter balance. To know hot, you need cold. To feel happy is to know sadness.
In our world of faster, higher, more, instant convenience and gratification. The need for slow, quality, less, delayed gratification has been emerging way before the great pause, brought on by the COVID pandemic. But the pandemic was the catalyst that bought Slow into view for all of us as we stop and reflect that we might just all die. There is more to life than the fast lane of progress and consumption. Yoga, mindfulness and mediation have surged in number of practitioners, and many more are turning to it for a counter balance to the break neck pace of the connected world. In the last 10 years, people who have practice yoga has increased by over 60% just in North American alone.
With social distancing now behind many of us, the economic machines are back on, pressing us all to get back together for the goal of value creation. While the market is made up by humans, it is devoid of humanity. It does not appreciate the quality we humans found for ourselves and others when we paused. Pausing, is not faster, higher, more. Pausing or slowing down in the context of economy is bad. Slow is not innovative. Slow is bad. Slow is old.
But Slow is not bad. Many things that offer us enjoyment and pleasure in life comes from time and effort. We are willing to pay more for quality goods. We remember hard won rewards. We have deeper emotional connection because of it. We take holidays just to go slow. More so then ever we need to love slow. And celebrate slow.
Slow in my view is not a decay of the great innovations we’ve achieved as a species. We all stand on shoulders of giants before us, to innovate, is an integral part of our DNA. Look at the great technologies that our elders before us have created and you will see them if you are willing to look. We need to reframe slow as rigour, responsibility, and realism. We need to consider the materials we use and consume and be mindful of what we produce. Slow is taking a pause to listen, to understand and to reflect before acting. It is deliberate living that increases the wellness of our mind, body and spirit. Slow is essential to sustainable innovation.
Slow is what is below the tip of the iceberg of success and abilities. What people see and celebrate are normally just a small part of the real story. The practitioners alone appreciate the time and effort they’ve invested to get to that moment. Often, a very slow process. Instead of celebrating the tip of the iceberg, would it not be better for us to encourage the efforts that help us get there? For when we do so, we know we have a good chance of success.
As a manager, I often work with people on growing their career. I have observed a growing pressure and desire to become an expert in a decreasing amount of time. I applaud the ambition, yet I worry for the stress and pressure one face juggling up-skilling and applying a skill confidently and effectively. Many of us are victims of this as the digital world shorten the perception of time to achieve consistent competence and performance. Celebrating slow but solid growth is needed.
We need to amplify the story of the Rabbit and the Tortoise where moral of the story is: Slow and steady wins the race!
Or if you’re Elon Musk, you just pressure-cook human beings to speed up the process. But the time and effort needed are still there. Just under what pressure and sacrifice of other things in life to achieve greatness? It is not fast, but making what is slow perform faster that is happening here.
Why do we need to celebrate slow now more than ever?
Recently, it was estimated that the world human population has reached 8 billion. And to sustain so many of us, our unique ability to innovate will need to rise to the challenge. The lifestyle that the developed countries live by is not scalable. Purchase and replacements of products need to slow down simply because so much will go to waste. It is projected by the World Bank that the amount of waste we will generate over the next 30 years will increase by roughly 70% in the next 30 years. A lot of these into open dumping grounds. Very soon, we’ll all be living in dumpsters.
As a designer myself, a shift in focus and time is needed to solve this problem instead of creating more digital experiences to improve convenience and careless consumption. I would encourage my fellow designers to do so too if this is not something already weighing heavily on your creative mind.
I believe if we can find more ways to sustain economic growth with mindful consumption, we have a bright future ahead of us. I believe helping people manage the expectations of fast, paying more for fewer but better, are ways forward.
Some of the early innovators are already showing us the way forward.
Patagonia
On top of my list is the famous Patagonia clothing company who’s founder — Yvon Chouinar — recently gave the company to the world. Citing here a quote from The New York Times article:
“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Mr. Chouinard, 83, said in an exclusive interview. New York Times
The company has shown that we can consume, enjoy our activities, protect our world and environments, and be profitable. It is not cheap or easy, but it is possible. In my opinion, Mr. Chouinard and his team have achieved such greatness equal to the heroes from centuries before.
If many more CEOs can think and act the way he has, we are on to a very different future where success is not defined by mainly growth and profits.
The B Corp certification
While we know green-washing is out there and spreading fast. The B-Corp certification is a great framework to guide businesses in achieving profitability while factoring in the different needs of stakeholders. An even more established and well-known certification — Fairtrade — has similar strategies in factoring all stakeholders and resources in the process of making foods and services for people and the world. Getting certified and keeping the quality required for these are demanding, and can incur much costs. They are also slow to achieve but they are so worth it when you see the impact they make to the people involved in the value chain.
These products tend to be more expensive. But they show us the true cost of getting a product to us. If we want to be responsible people, our choices in the supermarket will be smaller but of better quality. And if we can’t afford fair trade, then we perhaps consider goods of quality made closer to home so that we can support the communities we live in.
Fairphone
We need not regress in our technologies to go slow. We can still enjoy the benefits of our modern technologies. But we certainly do not need another iProduct every year. This phone maker took the challenge of Fairtrade and applied that to the phone industry. When you read or watch the story behind how they try and source the most fair way to produce their phones, you will see how challenging and “slow” it can be. But they made it.
These are prime examples of Slow and Steady. Our world needs it before it also burns out. It will need more of us contributing and sacrificing for it so that it can be “pressure-cooked” and super-charged slow to balance the fastness of things.
Before we forget what the great pause has shown us. Let’s celebrate Slow and make it the hero next, not the villain! Slow, is not bad. It is good.
Namaste 🙏
