There are many ways through which I am trying to slow down in life. The biggest one has to be writing.

What Do I Mean by Slowing Down?

I am finding it hard to explain what “slowing down” means without using examples, but I worry examples make for an incomplete picture, and just sound gimmicky. Here’s me trying my best.

My brain is functioning at warp speed.

By that, I don’t mean that I am quicker and smarter than others. I mean that my mind is very fast at imagining worst case scenarios, or identifying problems via pattern-matching.
We all do it, to some extent. Our brain makes connections faster than our conscious mind can think. It’s constantly analysing the past, trying to predict the future, mainly to avoid danger - like getting eaten by a predator!

My emotions kick in faster than logic. By the time I start thinking, my reasoning has already been dipped in big feelings.

Slowing down helps me see that. It helps the logic in my mind catch up with the emotions triggered by those chemicals released by my brain.
It makes me more curious, it allows me to notice things around me.

I want to slow down so I can live in the present. So I can focus on what is happening right now, and really engage with it.

Being slow is being intentional. It’s choosing. Choosing to do only one thing at a time¹. Choosing to let all the other thoughts run their course.

This constant race in my head between logic and emotions is what I’m trying to slow down.

Introducing: Pen and Paper

“Writing by hand is thinking on paper.”
- Leuchtturm1917

Over the last couple of years, I have been exploring different routines based on physical writing, and they have all helped me in some way.

When I write with a pen and paper, it forces me to think at the speed of my handwriting.

For extra slowness, I write with a fountain pen², on a nice notebook. I like the physical sensations it brings, as the nib just flows effortlessly on paper, sometimes feeling a bit scratchy as I change the angle of my wrist. The ink takes longer to dry, and you have to write slower if you don’t want your handwriting to look messy³.
It is one of my favourite things, now, and has been for the past 18 months.

It’s not harder, just a bit slower, allowing you to dwell on the same thought a little bit longer.

Suddenly, I am thinking by hand on paper. My thoughts take physical form. They no longer exist only in my head.

There is No Backspace Key

If I was writing with a computer, it would be very easy to make any thought disappear, leaving no trace. I can just hit the backspace key.

With a fountain pen, It’s just harder to censor myself. I can scribble over a word, it is still there. There is a memory of the fact that I wrote it. It was work, it was a part of me, it existed, and there is a fossil to prove it.

My thought is gone, my opinion has changed. And there is still a trace of it.

And that’s okay.

Editing then becomes selecting from material, as if the words were scraps laid out on my table that I need to assemble into an outfit with my sewing machine.

Writing all of it down now, and leaving some of the stuff out later is much better than self-censoring in my head.

Writing is Seeing

“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
- David Allen (Getting Things Done)

When I am stuck on a project, It helps me massively to write stuff on a whiteboard, or sticky notes.

To write stuff down, I have to decide what it is. I have to give it a name. I have to decide what it means, and oftentimes, as I am trying to write it down, I realise that I don’t quite understand what I am doing. It forces me to define it, clarify it.

This typically leads to a breakthrough, similarly to rubber duck debugging, where a software developer puts a rubber duck on their desk. When they are stuck, the duck serves as a reminder that they should try explaining their issue out loud, to better understand it themselves.

Once it is written down, I can look at it, move it around, rearrange it, leave it for a while, come back to it.
It leaves more space in my mind for problem-solving and creative thinking.

Imagine a fashion designer: their designing process doesn’t only involve thinking.

It involves sketching (several times), drawing a life-size pattern, pinning test material on a mannequin, trying different types of fabric, making different parts of the outfit at different times, rearranging them in various combinations… Once you see the sketch in real life, or the bits of fabric pinned together on the mannequin, it becomes easier to figure out what works well, and what doesn’t! You start identifying patterns.

My Writing Habits

Here are a few examples of how I use writing in my day to day life:

• Journaling: slows down my thoughts and emotions, and doomsday thinking
• Creative writing⁴: slows down my ideas, gives them space, slows down my impostor syndrome and the censor in my head
• Capturing on whiteboard: slows down “it’s too big, too complicated, too much work” thinking, slows down my procrastination demon
• Brainstorm / mindmap on paper, whiteboard, sticky notes: slows down the “I am never going to work it out” thinking
• Writing down choices: slows down paralysis by analysis (for example I keep a list of coffee shops I like going to on a notecard stuck on my wardrobe)
• Writing down a checklist: slows down “I forgot something” thoughts (they take a lot of compute space!)

Outro

There is so much power in sitting down, and spending an entire hour doing nothing but writing.

I highly recommend you try it. Put your phone on airplane mode, set a timer, and write. About anything.
If one hour seems scary, try 30 minutes. It’s only thirty times one minute. It goes very fast.

Try it. At least once. Tell me what happens. I’m curious.