Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christopher Richards, an old friend
and colleague, and founder of slownowdown.org,
an idea originated from his post-graduate work on finding a balance between
work and life. We talked about his latest projects, slowdown.org and how social
media has (and has not) affected the rate at which we run our lives.
“Coming to America (from England), I was surprised to see how hard American’s worked,” Christopher started. He was really trying to design a life for himself, allowing him to live a creative, more purposeful life. “Time is all we have,” he added. And, quoting “Why We Make Mistakes” by Joseph T. Hallinan, Richards pointedly asked me, “how do you want to spend you time?”
The pressures doctors go through studying to be doctors are extreme. They have to operate on four hours of sleep, Richards continued. But, there needs to be more rationality around it (the use of time). “The Promise of Sleep,” by sleep researcher, William C. Demnent, another reading list recommendation by Richards, has amazing stories about how stupid we become when we’re sleep deprived. We actually lose IQ points when we’re sleep deprived. Chronic stress can also blind you to your unique identity. You might be a good performer, some of the time, but you can forget who you are.
Richards went to art school in England. “I learned that in order to draw, you have to slow down. You see differently. A colleague once talked about how he needs to slow down and, in terms of sensory input, “you’re cut off from the body. What do your socks feel like right now?,” he asked. Nobody knows.
As educational guru, Sir Ken Robinson says: We’re educated from the neck up, and slightly to one side. We value the left-brain only. The right brain gets shut out and depersonalized.
To get back in touch with your creativity, “take a drawing class,” Richards recommends. “You’re slowed down, and paying attention to what’s going on. You become more aware of people, what’s going on in relationships, or just in terms of listening to music, observing if you’re a ‘painter.’ You will have a richer perspective of being in the world, your everyday moment to moment experience.”
“Everything we know is in the past.” Slowing down allows you to view things in a different perspective.”
Richards organically created slownowdown .org through his rich vein of humor, and an idea of play as outlined on Ted.org, by Dr. Stuart Brown. The more we work, the more we identify with work and cling, hang on to that, which is not good because if we’re let go (fired), we lose our identity. We’re kind of doing too much. Slowing down is not doing too much. It’s doing just enough. Like on LinkedIn, we see who has the most connections, but “who (really) cares? There is value to discovering a more vital personal self.”
Time is the real value. Everything needs time. Of course, we need money to get by. You can’t just kick back and be a lazy bum. Slow isn’t about being lazy.
There are a lot of people grasping at the bottom, who are so hungry, panicked, tightly bound, that they cannot be expansive and generous. Even if you have no money, you can be generous. Look at the sales model, where people are put into competitive, grasping environments. It’s not a healthy state of being.
You do have an identity on social media. People who take the time to view a person’s profile can learn a lot. “There is value in social media,” Richards exclaims. People can help one another using social media. There’s value in having a connection. It can be meaningful in many different ways. There are some people who just want to talk about the weather or what they saw on TV last night.
People will choose their level of engagement that suits them with social media. There is definitely a craving for face-to-face interaction. Things run a course of their own. You may be working in your office by yourself, and then you’ve had enough. You want change. You may want to get out and meet some people.
“I see the media as being very democratic.”
There are millions and millions of different viewpoints. In some areas, we have the same values. Social media has opened us up to seeing other people’s point of view. And, it takes time. If you can be doing something better, then do it, like learning a language, becoming better at bridge – like in the 50s when people supposedly had “hobbies.”
Social media may cause people not to have interpersonal skills, he counters. Coming back to slowing down, people used to focus on body language. That informs us, informs ourselves, and is where we began. Knowing the limits of social media is good. There are people out there with addictive personalities who are going to be addicted to social media no matter what. If it serves them, then that’s good. Some people make money on the Internet, others use it as a form of entertainment.
Either way, Richards says, he’s not for or against social
media, and he himself is solely focused on having a richer, more satisfying
life where he can be free to do the kind of work he finds interesting while
also painting, writing humor, and slowly appreciating the world and people
around him.
