What even is time?
We say time is precious, time is wasted, time is short, time is all we’ve got.. We say a lot about time, but what even is it?
Time is simply how we measure the passing of our days, it’s meaning is entirely up to you. Society likes to push hustle culture and tell us we don’t have enough time and need to streamline more things to get more done, but that’s not truth. The truth is that we want to slow down. We need to do less.
In April of 2021, 15 French explorers spent 40 days in a cave deprived of sunlight and any concept of keeping time, do you know what happened? They thought only 30 days had passed.
Without any way to track the time, they naturally slowed down. My theory is that this is what we all really want and need, to slow down.
Embrace the slow down.
God gave us 24 hours in a day, are we really going to keep suggesting that he messed up? We only feel the need for more hours in a day so we can do more in a day, but why? Why do we feel this need to do more every day?
I think it’s time for us to break up with Hustle Culture for good. No more of this on again off again. Time to call it quits. Hustle Culture just isn’t working out for us. It keeps making promises it won’t keep. It keeps hurting us over and over. We see other people seem to be thriving on Hustle Culture, and we want it back, but it’s just the same hurt over and over.
It’s time to form a relationship with Slow Living. Let’s build a strong foundation here, slow down, and enjoy every moment. Slow Living can give you what you need: peace, calmness, joy, room to grow, quality time.
Batch tasks.
Slow living doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get anything done. We’re just going to decide what’s important and do that. Batching your tasks is a great way to simplify the number of things you feel pulled to do. Using a time block method – with plenty of blank spaces – can help you to blend slow living with your drive to get things done.
Follow your intuition.
Take time to be mindful of what’s happening inside you and around you. Every day is a new day and should be approached as such. Don’t try to plan every day to look just like the last. Your body and life go through cycles, some days you will have high energy and some days you’ll just want to snuggle up all day, and that’s okay. Don’t try to change who you are, instead plan accordingly.
Following your intuition while making your daily plans gets easier as you begin to live more slowly and let go of the hold hustle culture has had on you. When you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, it’s often your nervous system telling you to slow down and breathe.
Spend more time where it matters.
Decide what’s really important to you, not what’s important to others, and spend your time there.
Delegate what you don’t enjoy – chore swap with a friend, hire it out, make it a family activity, or designate 1 hour per week (or however much time it would realistically take) when you power that out.
Don’t get too focused on doing everything faster, keep your focus on spending more time on what’s important to you.
Brittni Clarkson 