Life at Half Speed
This summer I found myself in the British Midlands, at a museum of the so-called Black Country, commemorating the early industrial revolution and the people who lived and died producing the coal that built Britain.
As I waited to descend a mock coal mine and learn about the work done in the dark and dust by children as young as eleven, I chatted with an American corporate lawyer in her sixties.
Having taken in exhibits about forging steel and casting aluminum—and coming from the career-obsessed city that is Washington, DC—we found ourselves discussing the nature and history of work. She described when email first came to her firm.
“It was supposed to save us so much time,” she said. “But really it just made more work possible. You used to have certain documents that, once they were printed, that was that. With email, edits could be made and sent down to the wire.”
Word processing and email may have made eight hours of work possible in six, but they didn’t save us time. We didn’t spend the extra hours walking our dogs, playing with our kids, or cooking elaborate meals. We did more work, faster.
Enter AI.
When a basketball player is flustered by her opponents, the announcers say she’s “been sped up.” She’s no longer able to play her game at her own pace, and she’s probably going to lose.
How can we meet the demands of modern life without being “sped up”? How do we play the game like we’re in charge of the tempo?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers.
What I do have is the practice of somatic awareness. I know that when I take the time to notice myself—whether it’s a moment of peace while walking down the street, a millisecond of grounding before stepping into a work event, or an hour of nervous system regulation work with a client—I slow down; I see the whole court; I play my game. I quietly, subtly refuse to be sped up.
And from that place, I can make better decisions about the rest of it.
Want to practice life at your own pace?
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