As an speedthinker, I had just a few hundred thoughts up my sleeve that I was dying to share on Slow Planet.

Instead, please let me introduce to you a potent theme that has run through them all:

How I Kill my Literary Tortoise:
Stage One: Expectations.  “It has to be perfect!”
Stage Two: Limitations. “It has to be done by 10 o clock!”
Stage Three: Obligations. “It has to be brown, square, dull, blegh..”*clicks on facebook*
Result: Overwhelmed Overthinker.

To illustrate, here’s batch of over-thinking, fresh from the oven:

Blog: I have to find that perfect niche! The slow movement is so INTRINSIC to my DEEPEST convictions.. where to even BEGIN! OK.. lets start thinking about it shall we..steady…steady..
With a million intertwined ideas screaming for further investigation, finding one shining beacon worth reflecting on is overwhelming. My mind is RACING with SLOWNESS! - I’ve successfully achieved stage one. Tick!

“But, alas, I must write SOMETHING! “

Deadline: It has to be done by 10 o clock!  Smart thinking Elise. That way I’ll be SURE to spew something out there! Fantastic. I’m in stage two. The nasty ‘O’ word (obli-*choke*) has caste its spell on the task at hand and I find myself embracing a world of..
Dullification: Checkmate. It’s an obligation. ‘It has to be done by 10! ‘ ‘I am limited to one topic!’ My mind loves to create obligations and starts thinking up a whole bunch of others to keep the original ones company. Ironically, I end up wondering why writing a blog on slow is proving tedious while a million thoughts race through my head. Blogging becomes that square, brown, dull box. My literary tortoise is sick.

Feeding my Literary Tortoise:
Cutting some slack:  Sometimes the best way the take something seriously is to laugh at just how seriously I am taking it. Humour acts as a match maker between serious idealism and creative spontaneity!

Ditching obligations: Not ignoring a deadline. But whenever possible, doing what I feel capable of doing, allowing my engagement in the project at hand to dictate how much time will be appropriate for its completion, rather than a clock on the wall. I sometimes write a list FULL of plans, making sure to include deadlines for them ALL. I then scrap the list and do what feels best. It helps me to see the humour in how tightly time has me wrapped around its little finger. Often, my day becomes more productive.

Just do it: Just do it.

That said, I look forward to looking forward to posting again,
Slowly does it!

So, there I was, trying to explain to my Doctor - who rarelly seems me - my “je ne ces’t quois” symptoms, feeling awkward for not knowing very well what was happening to me. On that day, there as a trainee doctor with him and he was explaining - during the time it was with me - what he was doing, why, and the decisions he was taking. But, on the other hand, he included me on the training…

My doctor was explaining to the trainee and to me that he had been on a Conference the day before, doing a presentation to students of the 9th grade to whom will be asked to choose a career path, by the end of this school term. So he explained the positive aspects of being a Doctor but he also preapared themselves - without scaring but encouraging them - to the less positive ones.

In Portugal, a Family doctor - the so called general medical practitioner - has 12 minutes for a Patient Visit. Can you imagine? How do you listen, examine, talk to and specially explain a Patient the reasons why he does not feel good and the reasons why he has to see the Doctor?…  How do you explain and prepare a patient that is about to know that has a Cancer? Ou that he or she has Diabetes and that the daily routines are going to change for the rest of the patient’s life?… How do you deal with feelings and fragile minds on particular moments in… 12 minutes?…

Well, this is not very sexy for an young doctor due to the stress caused by the amount of patients a doctor sees per day, in general. Quick responses in such a short period and controled time is just simply terrible when it comes to human lives. But my Doctor - whom I did not see very often - surprised me with such an emotional inteligence to deal with these situations while he was telling the trainee his experience in dealing with Time trying not to scare at all but confronting him with the naked  reality of these times where the Healthcare Systems are now ruled my Managers instead of Doctors.

Even being highly experienced and emotionally able to deal with these and even other higher stressfull situations, mistakes are expected to happen. And when it comes to human lives… there’s no Time for escuses!

Slow Regards from Lisbon,

Birdie

Today is the International Day of Slowness.

And you know what that means:

Switch off your Blackberry. Turn off the TV. Go for a walk. Share a long, leisurely meal with friends or family. Read a story to your children. Take a nap in the middle of the day. Do some yoga. Spend the afternoon with a friend that you normally just speak to on Facebook. Channel the Pointer Sisters by bringing a slow hand to your lovemaking.

Wander round a forest or park. Smell the roses.

Or just sit still and do nothing for a few minutes. When was the last time you did that? And didn’t feel restless or guilty?

Do whatever slips you into a slower gear.

Just don’t try to squeeze all the suggestions on the list into a single day. That would turn slowing down into another exercise in rushing to cram everything in. Remember that less is more.

The bottom line is that this is a day to set your inner tortoise free. Don’t fret and overanalyze. Just do it!

Remember that old Woody Allen joke? “I took a speed reading course. We read War and Peace. It’s about Russia.”

Sounds horribly familiar, doesn’t it? These days we skim through thousands of words a day at high speed. But how much of that ‘reading’ do we actually take in? Or enjoy?

The bottom line is that faster isn’t always better. You don’t gulp down a glass of fine wine. You don’t put Mozart on fast-forward. Sure, there are times when whizzing through a piece of text is the only option. Or maybe even the best option: I certainly don’t linger over the prose in the free newspaper on the Tube. But surely Tolstoy deserves a bit more of our attention.

That’s why the Slow Reading Movement is gaining ground.

Now many months into my new job, I seem to have managed to maintain my ‘Slow’ approach. I worried about how to make a success of my career while maintaining that elusive balance, and wanted to find a way to be satisfied in my working life without giving in to the need to be ‘always on’. But having moved from the City to a much more interesting industry, and one of the world’s biggest brands, I worried there would be innate pressure to work very long hours in order to achieve results. But having spent many months of City redundancy-funded sabbatical time thinking about what I really wanted out of life, I was determined to not go back to the old habits.

While my colleagues seem to be constantly working, and leaving later and later, I have managed to stick to my guns, and am out of the office by 5:30pm almost every day. And I am no longer the Blackberry checking fiend I once was - the Blackberry still goes home with me, but its main role after hours is as an alarm clock. The blinking red light indicating new messages is ignored.

Perhaps it’s because I am now happy to do my job, without any burning ambition to climb the corporate ladder, but somehow in this role, I’ve managed to remain removed from the pressure to be ‘always on’. While my colleagues take their laptops home every night so they can keep working, mine stays at the office, where it belongs.

Which is not to say that I’m no longer ambitious, or that I’ve relinquished responsibility for what I need to achieve in order to do a good job. I still want to do a great job, achieve interesting things, and change the world. I just want to do it on terms that suit me.

A colleague who has just gone on holiday was lamenting the fact that he felt the need to keep working and checking his Blackberry even while he was away from work. To me, there’s a simple solution - switch it off, or don’t recharge it while you’re away. That’s what I do!! But his view was that the Big Boss would expect him to keep working and wonder what he’d achieved while being on holiday.

I don’t believe that you can blame that on the boss - as individuals, we’re each responsible for the expectations we set and how we manage the pressures work puts on us. My experience in this role has been that my boss is happy enough - my achievements are good, with no need to work stupidly long hours or to extend my work life into my real life. My boundaries are clear, and I still achieve all that’s needed of me and deliver high quality work.

Perhaps I’m naive and misguided, but I think there’s more respect to be gained by managing things in a way that works for you, rather than working long hours, neglecting your home life and resenting your job and your boss along the way. So many people do it though, seemingly confident, mature people accept the invitations for 7am or 6pm meetings, moaning about it, but never articulating what is ok for them.

I actually feel that because my boundaries are so clear, it makes a working day much easier. Prioritisation is simple and it’s somehow much easier to say no, when I’m clear in my mind that getting home in time to enjoy spending time with friends and family is of more importance than staying behind to write one more email.

And of course, there are rare exceptions. There are occasional times when things go wrong, or a call with colleagues in other timezones means some after hours attention is required. But on the whole, it all works out and feels balanced.

So while my colleagues are working themselves to ill health, stress and general dissatisfaction with their working situation, I am a much more content person for having taken control of this part of my life. Which has to be a better result for everyone;  my employer who gets the results they want out of me and a relatively satisfied employee who doesn’t resent them, or take lots of sick or stress days due to overwork, my friends and family who suddenly feel like a much more important part of my life.  And most importantly, me.

The 10th of June is one of the Portuguese national bank holidays and it’s a significant date to the Country where the most important Political and Military entities are the main players of the celebrations and speeches that last for most part of the day.

However, apart from these celebrations there was an important news that had a strong impact on every national TV channels and Press: for the first time, since 1900, Portugal has presented the lowest rate of Newborn Children in the Country. People get married later than ever, have children almost at 40 and there are more people dieing than in the previous decades versus the number of people that are born.

Many political analysts commented on these facts and they all have agreed about the causes behind these structural Social problems:

1. the worldwide economical crisis;
2. the high levels of unemployment;
3. the lack of employment stability.

In fact, a huge stain for an important date that celebrates the Nation.

However, I believe that there are other causes for the negative results of this National Demographics Report. There’s a strong need to change the way Societies live, not only in Portugal but all over the Planet. Even if the economical crisis was not so serious as it is, if the levels of unemployment were not so high, etc… would these results be too different?… Probably but not meaningfully. The numbers would rise but… at a slower pace.

To make my point, as far as I’m concerned, even if the scenario was of economical growth would the levels of stress, anxiety and pressure decrease? Would people feel themselves with better lives with more free time to enjoy the goods they would buy and to spend more time with their family and children? I don’t think so. Without wanting to speculate too much about the economical issues the fact is that our lives became worse - qualitatively speaking - with the fast economical development of many countries without knowing how to manage that growth and not measuring the impact of that economical and technological development on Society.

I am neither against the technology nor the economical growth! I am known among my friends as the “Gadget Girl”. :)  And I do believe this is vital for our survival and also quality of living. However, in times of worldwide crisis, worldwide stress and anxiety, worldwide depression increasing levels… lessons must be learnt and not be camouflaged.

Any kind of development process should be also sustainable for long-term and its impacts on our lifestyle should be measured and monitoriesed in short-periods of time.

Technological and Economical growth are extremely important to maintain our social systems working but in a more humanized and qualitative way.

This is my biggest wish for the Day of my Nation: Portugal.

You are writing a book entitled ‘Slow IT’; what do you mean with slow IT?

A similar thing is happening in conferences, in the way delegates all pull their laptops out during the keynotes.

A big cheer for the new British PM David Cameron, who has kicked off his premiership by banning cellphones from cabinet meetings. Amen to that. Politicians make bad enough decisions as it is without being constantly distracted round the cabinet table by incoming emails and text messages.

Turn off that Blackberry and pay attention, Chancellor!