Slow and Fast

“How do we slow down what matters the most and speed up what benefits change and progress? We don’t want to impede progress, but we are seeking reconnection to ourselves, to each other, and with the world.”- John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design. Quote taken from Hurry up and Wait, a recent feature at Good that asked various artists and futurists about the prospect of the Slow Movement.

Cool: Being offline

Using social media has become a mainstream activity - this is at least what surveys like Social Media Tracker wave 3 (byUniversal McCann) tell us. If that is truly so, being active in networks, blogs, tweets etc. must be already yesteryear's fashion to the trendsetters and early adopters. Its simply not cool to be main stream!

In fact, the world is ripe for a counter trend to constant online activities, since constant networking also means perpetual disruption which translates to stress and productivity loss.

But how can anyone who makes a point of being part of an elite of forerunners show that offline is the new black?

One way of going offline with style would be to turn logging out into a luxury. In a way, power napping in spas (like Yelo in New York) or with special equipment (like the napshell or the EnergyPod) offers just that.

Another idea could be to have a zero communication service (by telecommunication providers ?)which holds back all communication in a defined area for a selected time. At a premium price, of course. Have not seen this yet but it is just a question of time...

Companies can also reserve rooms where employees can work completely uninterrupted. Would it not feel like a privelege to work for a company that frees staff from stress?

At any rate, stating that one decided to quit a network or an online habit may become just as main stream as joining one of the community services. As an added value, such a statement adds an aura of no-nonsense down-to-earth rationality to the person who made the statement.

Come to think of it, such a statement started yesterday's Iconoculture newsletter: "I committed Twittercide the other day. And while I'm sure it was disappointing to the couple hundred Twitter followers who had gotten used to updates on what I ate for dinner (usually lasagna) or my level of exhaustion (high), I retired my account for many reasons — one of which was the fact that I wasn't having much fun with that aspect of my identity anymore."

Related: Communicate Less

Picture by OmirOnia (sxc)

A Quantum View of the World

Modern physics tells us that everything is relative, and if you look hard, you find that substances are not made out of atoms and electrons, but out of nothing. Or rather, out of relations between nothing. Which is information, knowledge. (Yes, we're living in a knowledge driven society :-)

I find this "quantum view of the world" as amazing as I find it hard to grasp. In this short video, laboratory scientist Dean Radin explains it so that even I can understand it a tiny bit better.



The video can be found on the global oneness project website, which is in itself a website worth browsing through: www.globalonenessproject.org

Communicate less

Communication, communication, communication. That seems to be the mantra when it comes to good team management, successful organizational change and the much sought-after collaboration. Tools from emails to wikis, Skype to Twitter are enabling communication everywhere, anytime at low cost. – But if you get the idea that communication should flow continuously, you are in danger of receiving perpetual, ubiquitous chatter (i.e. noise) instead of high-quality interaction. Communication should come in small, efficient dosages. And just as “slow food” or “slow transport” are supposed to bring quality back into our eating and travel habits, “slow communication” could raise the productivity at work - and even the indulgence in work!

Slow communication – some fragments

• Switch out: 37signals, the web2.0 company behind popular collaboration tools like basecamp and campfire advises “alone time” of uninterrupted work as the means to safeguard productivity (see their publication Getting Real). E.g. no telephone and email between 9.00 and 14.00. Some companies like U.S. Cellular try to solve the problem by introducing zero-email-days (see this article at USAToday.)
• Opportunities: Michael Arrington, famous Techcrunch blogger complained he received more than 2000 emails a day – and he saw this as a business opportunity: “The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages. If I knew what that solution was, I’d quit this blog and go do it.” Yes, there is money to be made and some already do it – like Timothy Ferris, whose book The 4-Hour-Workweek became a hot selling item at Amazon – he also advised to radically cut down inefficient communication.
• Meetings: One way to achieve this is spending less time with meetings. The FT recently gave the anti-meeting movement some space: “If three people meet in a corridor and discuss a project for five minutes, they have had a meeting, and probably an effective one. But most meetings are seen as immovable blocks in diaries.” Bill Daniels, chief executive of American Consulting & Training is quoted with views on the cost-side of meetings: "[Some] meetings are very expensive. Not only do you have all the people in the room, but for every hour you spend in the meeting, there's five to 10 hours getting ready.” Nevertheless, he also says that meetings are needed to build teamwork.

Helping employees avoid inefficient communication should be in the interest of every company (inefficient meetings are not just expensive and unproductive but also never climate friendly!) and therefore a management topic. But still, everyone probably needs to find their own individual balance between too much and too little. I personally find lack of communication much more frustrating than communication overkill, which at least gives me a chance to pull the plug.