Slow Working is the New Trend

Put space between you and burnout

Okay, to be fair, slow working is not the new trend. YET.

In the words of our favorite San Francisco bicycle shop, Scenic Routes: “Slow is Forever.”

Slow is forever in part because you can’t keep rushing around and expect that’s going to be sustainable or go well long-term. 

People break (or crash or are crashed into if you’re on a bike). 

We know too well the emotional and mental results: burnout, rust out, and career grief. The physical impact shows up in all sorts of ailments. (Flashback to my own chronic stress health issues pre-career change.) 

No more. As one of my biotech clients said last week, “I’m ready to learn how to work to live, not live to work.”

Yes, friends! I’m here to proclaim slow working as the new regenerative lifestyle to replace and resist the bullshitery of go-go-go that squeezes more out of you to make sure your life (and identity) revolves around your J-O-B. 

What is slow working then? Here’s a good overview from Rachel Karl.

This newer conversation in the business literature is about companies embracing slow work. Though often paired with the goal of increasing productivity as well as the benefits of ‘work-life balance’ and quality. This makes sense given how our desire has tanked as we are expected to keep churning out work even during all the many ongoing social, health, political pandemics of our times.

Change may be coming, but most of us don’t work for the organizations that are early adopters of slow working. So we have to create other options that are available to us in order to reclaim a more natural and regenerative flow of living and working.

Throughout the rest of the month, I’ll be offering how my clients have begun carving out a slow working space for themselves and how you can as well.