In Praise of Slowness – by Carl Honoré

This isn’t just about “taking the time to smell the roses” although yes, that too. Rather, it’s mostly about looking at what drives us to speed everything up in the first place, and correcting where appropriate.

If your ancestors had time to eat fruit and lie in the sun, then why, with all of modern technology now available, are you harangued 16+ hours a day by the pressures of universally synchronized timepieces?

Honoré places a lot of the blame squarely on the industrial revolution; whereas previously our work would be limited by craftsmen who take a year to complete something, or the pace of animals in a field, now humans had to keep up with the very machines that were supposed to serve us—and it’s only got worse from there.

This book takes a tour of many areas affected by this artificial “need for speed”, and how it harms not just our work-life balance, but also our eating habits, the medical attention we get, and even our love lives.

The prescription is deceptively simple, “slow down”. But Honoré dedicates the final three chapters of the book to the “how” of this, when of course there’s a lot the outside world will not accommodate—but where we can slow down, there’s good to be gained.

Bottom line: if you’ve ever felt that you could get all of your life into order if you could just pause the outside world for a week or two, this is the book for you.

Click here to check out In Praise of Slowness, and make time for what matters most!