No Business Like Slow Business
Now no cheating by skipping to the bottom of the post. Who is this being oveheard by ABC News?;
A:”You should be on the beach. You need a break. Well, you need to be able to keep your head together.”
B:”You’ve got to refresh yourself.”
A:”Do you have a break at all?”
B:”I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who – not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process – said that, should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be . . .”
A:”These guys just chalk your diary up.”
B:”Right. In 15-minute increments . . .”
A:”We call it the dentist’s waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.”
B:”And, well, and you start making mistakes, or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel ..”
A:”Your feeling. And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions.”
B:”That’s exactly right. And the truth is that we’ve got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know 10 times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you’re trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you.”
Barack Obama (B) and David Cameron (A) might enjoy;
In Praise of Slow, by Carl Honore
Slow Planet (the ‘Global Hub for the Slow Revolution’)
Slow Down Now (strapline; Multitasking is a Moral Weakness)
One Reply to “No Business Like Slow Business”
Oli – A few quotes;
‘Festina Lente’ or Make Haste Slowly (Fabians)
‘Slow down or nothing worthwhile will ever catch up with you’ (Roger Von Oech)
A great book on this – what he calls ‘the slow way of knowing’ is by Guy Claxton called ‘Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind’.
He says: ‘We meet with cleverness, focus and deliberation those challenges that can only be properly handled with patience, intuition and relaxation’
I use the analogy of the Dimmer Switch in my books. The light isn’t quite out – it never is – but is dimmed. You’re resting while your brain is subtly working and coming up with some great stuff. But you have to allow it time to do so. It really is about very ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’ thinking. Although you cannot idle your way to insight either.
On another matter I saw a great piece by American ‘Humaerobicist’ CW Metcalf the other day. He was in the burns unit of a children’s hospital. He came up to an eight year old who had been set alight at home by his alcoholic father – his face had to be reconstructed, plastic surgery etc. CWM approached the child to talk. He said ‘You’ll have to forgive me, I have never spoken to a burns victim before’ The child quick as a flash shot back with pride ‘Victims are dead people. I am a burns survivor’. What a great attitude!