(”The Happy Snail”; courtesy of ruslou)
1. “Slow” is a state of mind. Compare the following:
Busy v. Engaged
Hurried v. Calm
Stressed v. Tranquil
Putting out Fires v. Prevention
Impatience v. Patience
Quantity v. Quality
2. The Slow Food Movement essentially challenges each of us to use local ingredients harvested and put together in a socially and environmentally responsible way. Instead of frequenting fast food establishments, give more attention to where your food comes from, take more care in how it is prepared, and be more thoughtful of the time spent enjoying your meals.
Follow the Slow Food Manifesto: “May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.”
3. Eat slowly. It takes 20 minutes for our stomach to tell our brains that we are full, and if we eat too fast, we tend to eat more than we need to. Every time that you put food in your mouth, put your fork or other eating utensil down and let go of it. Do not pick it up again until you have thoroughly chewed your food and have swallowed it.
4. Instead of multi-tasking–which is stressful and not very productive–do everything with one-pointed attention. In the words of Buddha: “When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit. Don’t wobble.”
5. Create your own “Slow Manifesto”.
6. Get enough sleep. When you’re tired your ability to think and your eye-hand coordination decrease, which means you’re less productive and more likely to make mistakes. In addition, studies show that people who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease.
7. Create a morning ritual that will allow you to begin your day in a calm, unhurried manner, setting the tone for the rest of the day.
8. Take a hike, whether it’s an overnight trip or a half-day excursion through nature.
9. Live by the motto: “A time for everything and everything in its time”.
10. Prioritize. Instead of trying to do it all decide what are the most important things for you to accomplish.
11. Cultivate an abundance mentality. A lot of our rushing about is caused by the fear that if we don’t hurry up, someone else is going to beat us to what we want and we will have to do without. If we change our frame of mind from scarcity to the knowledge that there is more than enough for all, we will naturally slow down.
12. Making the time to take care of your body now is a better strategy than waiting to have to take time off to deal with illness.
13. Spend a day baking pies, tarts, cupcakes, and muffins.
14. When someone is talking to you, give them your full attention. Instead of rehearsing in your head what you’re going to say next, concentrate on what they’re saying. One of the best ways to connect with others is by truly listening to them.
15. Cultivate mindfulness:
“When we do things with only a part of the mind, we are just skimming the surface of life. Nothing sinks in; nothing has real impact. It leads to an empty feeling inside. Unfortunately, it is this very emptiness that drives us to pack in even more, seeking desperately to fill the void in our hearts. What we need to do is just the opposite: to slow down and live completely in the present. Then every moment will be full.” — Eknath Easwaran
16. Set an egg timer to go off after every forty minutes of sitting at your desk working. When the timer goes off, get up, stretch, drink water, take a breathing break, and close your eyes for a couple of minutes.
17. Schedule creativity breaks. Creativity experts agree that taking time for incubation is a vital step in the creative process. After a period of intense concentration, Albert Einstein would take a nap or find another way to detach from whatever he was working on. He described that during these mental breaks his unconscious mind would go on thinking about the challenge and surprise him with an insight when he least expected it.
18. Take time off for leisure. Carl Honoré, author of best-selling book In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed
, says: “In our workaholic culture, we have lost the art of leisure. We never make time to switch off; to rest and reflect; to play; to do nothing at all. But leisure is not an optional extra; it is an essential part of a life well-lived and a cornerstone of every great civilization.
19. Read The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations
.
20. Consider using your cellphone only for the reasons it was originally intended: safety, security, and emergencies.
21. Move at your own rhythm. We are all familiar with Henry David Thoreau’s famous quote: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
22. Join a civic group devoted to slowing down, such as:
- The Deceleration of Time, a civic group based Austria.
- The Art of Slow Living, an Italian civic group.
- The Long Now Foundation, a group based in San Francisco, California, established to provide an alternative to a “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking.
- Take Back Your Time, a nonprofit group based in Seattle, Washington, is leading a national campaign to address time famine by using conferences and teach-ins to wean people off their need to be busy.
- Slow Food USA is a nonprofit group that offers an alternative to fast-food eating and industrial food production. It encourages members to plan communal meals and use farmer’s markets. It has at least 80,000 members in 100 countries.
23. Become a citizen of Slowplanet, a web site that Carl Honoré and Geir Berthelsen, a Norwegian motivational speaker, have set up together. Its goal is to be a hub for all things slow, from slow travel to slow shopping to slow design. They advocate the following:
“Slow is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace; it’s about working, playing and living better by doing everything at the right speed.”
24. Work smarter, not faster or harder.
25. Practice random acts of slowness.
26. Join a time bank, such as TimeBanks, USA: For every hour you spend doing something for someone in your community, you earn one Time Dollar. Then you have a Time Dollar to spend on having someone do something for you.
27. The Sloth Club advocates the shift from the culture of ‘more, faster and tougher’ to that of ‘less, slower and non-violent’.
28. Know when to change gears: when to stop, watch, and listen, and when to shift into action.
29. Catch the sunset.
30. Create a ritual for the end of the day so that you go to bed each night in a calm and relaxed state.
31. Simplify your life so that you don’t try to fill your time with more than you can do. Follow my 100 Tips to Simplify Your Life.
32. Make a commitment to slow down:
“I hereby pledge to slow down for the benefit of my health, my happiness, my well being, my family, my creativity, my community, and the environment.”
译文:
慢活—32招教你即刻开始
“快乐的蜗牛”; 蒙 ruslou 提供)
1. “慢”是一种心境。比较下列的心境吧：
繁忙与投入
仓促与从容
重压与宁静
救急与预防
急躁与耐心
求量与重质
2. “慢餐运动”（The Slow Food Movement）从本质上挑战着我们的观念，引导我们使用那些以对社会及环境利益负责的方式收割和采集的原料。如今，人们更关注食物的来源及其准备过程，并且更乐意花时间享受他们的膳食，而不再是常常摄入快餐食品。
遵从“慢餐运动”宣言而行事吧：“越来越多的人们错把狂乱当做所谓的效率，但愿适度的感官享受以及缓缓沁入而久久不散的愉悦使我们远离这种谬论。”
3.慢速进食。我们的胃需要用20分钟才能把“已饱腹”的信号传达给大脑，因此，倘若我们狼吞虎咽，就有可能摄取过多的食物。每次将食物送进嘴之后，就把刀叉或其他的餐具置之一旁。在你仔仔细细咀嚼完食物并且吞下之前，就不要再拾起餐具了。
4. 专一地对待任何事，而不要同时处理很多问题，不然会使你备受压力而效率也有待提高。如佛家所言：“行，则全神而为之；坐，亦贯注而为之。勿兼行。”
5. 创建属于你的“慢活”宣言（“Slow Manifesto”）吧。
6. 睡眠充足。当你感到疲劳时，你的思维及手眼协调能力随之下降，这也就意味着你效率低下并可能频繁出错。此外，研究显示，睡眠不足者丧命于心脏病之几率为常人两倍。
7. 建立一种“清晨仪式”，使你的一天在平静、从容中开始，也在这种氛围中结束。
8. 多远足，无论是一场夜行，亦或是在自然中穿梭半日。
9. 以它为生活箴言吧：“凡事均有定期，万物皆存可能。”
10. 拿捏轻重。择最重要之事而为之之，勿试图同时兼顾所有工作。
11. 培养大气的心态。人们认为倘若自己不够迅速，便可能被他人捷足先登，以致错失期求之物并再难挽回，而人们忙里忙外，正基于这种恐惧之上。如若我们能转变观念，认识到物于我等皆无尽也，取之无禁，用之不竭，是造物者之无尽藏也，则“慢”行指日可待也。
12. 现在开始就花些功夫爱惜自己的身体吧，就比病来如山倒时再去料理要强得多。
13. 用一天时间做馅饼、甜果馅饼、纸杯蛋糕和松饼。
14. 全神贯注地对待别人的谈话。与其不断在心中思量接下来要出口的话，不如注意倾听他人之言。和他人沟通最好的办法就是全神贯注地倾听。
15. 形成对生活的思考:
“如果不尽全力思考，我们就过着粗糙而肤浅的生活。没有理解，何来震撼？这终究导致了心灵的空虚。而不幸的是，也正是这种空虚感逼得我们愈发疯魔，企求填补内心的空虚。而我们该做的却恰恰相反：放慢脚步，活在当下，从此，生活便充实而完满。”
——伊克纳斯·伊斯沃兰（《圣雄·甘地》作者）
16. 设置倒计时器，每次工作满四十分钟就要离开案头。倒计时器一响，立马起身，伸展，饮水，深呼吸，之后闭目养神几分钟。
17. 安排“创意休憩”。创意专家认为花些时间培养灵感对于创新非常重要。阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦在一阵子精神高度集中后打个小吨或者找个法子跳出他的工作。他描述称在这段生理放松时期，他会继续无意识地思考工作上的难题，并且会迸出出其不意的领悟。
18. 花点时间放松。卡尔欧·诺黑是畅销书《赞颂“慢活”：一场全球性运动怎样挑战着“速食”狂热》（In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed）的作者，在他看来：“在我们工作狂似的文化中，人们遗失了休闲的艺术。我们不再休息、沉思，不再嬉戏或索性什么都不做了。但是休闲不是额外的选择——它是优质生活的核心与每一种伟大文明的基石。”
19. 阅读《懒惰的重要性：赞颂娱乐、休闲及度假》（The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations.）一书。
20. 出于安全、保卫及紧急需要才考虑使用手机，而这也正是设计手机的初衷。
21. 随心而动。我们都非常熟悉亨利·戴维·梭罗（美国作家、哲学家，著有散文集《瓦尔登湖》和论文《论公民的不服从权利》等）的这句名言： “如果有个人没有跟同伴们齐步并进,也许那是因为他听到不一样的鼓声，就让他按他自己的步伐前进吧，无论他走得多快、多慢或多远。”
22. 加入公民团体，投身于“慢活”，譬如：
- 减速时间（The Deceleration of Time）：以奥地利为活动中心的公民团体；
- 慢活艺术（The Art of Slow Living） ，意大利公民团体；
- 广义此刻基金会（The Long Now Foundation）：以加利福尼亚州旧金山市为活动中心，以改善“更快速/更肤浅”的思维倾向、倡导“更缓慢/更有益”的思考方式为建立宗旨；
- 夺回你时间（Take Back Your Time）：以华盛顿西雅图为活动中心的非赢利性组织，通过会议及宣讲会帮助人们摆脱对繁忙生活的苛求，并引领这一场全国性革命。
- 美国慢餐（Slow Food USA）：为人们提供除消费快餐食品及食品工业生产之外选择的非赢利性组织。该组织鼓励成员为社区准备膳食并前往农夫市场购物，拥有来自100多个国家的至少8万会员。
23. 成为“慢活星球”（SlowPlanet）的市民。这是由卡尔欧·诺黑和挪威激励大师盖·贝瑟森共同创建的网站，其目标是成为一切“慢”事物的中心，从慢速旅游到慢速购物，再到慢速设计。他们的主张如下：
“慢”并不意味着对待任何事都处以蜗牛般的速度，而是以正确的速度对待一切，从而更好地工作、休闲与生活。
24. 巧用工，而非盲目快工或苦工。
25. 尝试不经意的“慢活”举动。
26. 加入时间银行。譬如在美国时间银行（TimeBanks, USA)中，你为社区服务一分钟，就可获得一“时间美元”，而你就能享受他人为你进行价值一“时间美元”的服务。
27. 懒人俱乐部（The Sloth Club）主张文化由“更多、更快、更强硬”向“更少、更慢、更和谐”的转变。
28. 学会换挡：何时停止、关注、聆听，以及何时展开行动。
29. 赶上黄昏。
30. 创建一种仪式以纪念一天的完结，并帮助你每日在平静及悠闲中上床就寝。
31. 简化你的生活，你也就不会勉强自己超负荷地为自己所不能为。参见我的《简化生活的100条小贴士》（100 Tips to Simplofy Your Life）。
32. 许下“慢活”承诺：
“为了我的健康、幸福和安宁，以及我的家人、创造力和社区还有整个环境的利益，我在此承诺放慢脚步，享受‘慢活’。”