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The Cost of Speeding Through Life: Part 1
by Bob Anderson, Senior Associate
In this two-part article, Bob Anderson, a Senior Associate with Dynamic Results explores, identifies and challenges the pace at which a critical mass of the world’s workforce speeds through life.
In this first of this series, you, the reader will be challenged to create balance in your life and will be offered insights in how to develop that way of life, and will be left with the challenge of doing so on your own or with the guidance of a performance coach.
The Reality: The choice is ours to make: To live at the pace we are now, excel the rate or create a balance that slows us down and actually makes us more personally and professionally effective.
The Mirror: We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, of each day. And like many of you; I am guilty of doing just that. A recent trip traveling on the red-line in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while simultaneously dropping calls on my cell phone as we dodged dead-spaces in the Boston Metro area while on my way to a client meeting, reminded me of the pace at which much of the world's population speeds through their respective “daze.”
Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point.
The Facts: Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold, and American adults devote on average a mere half hour a week to making love.
Living on the edge of exhaustion, we are constantly reminded by our bodies and by our minds that the pace of life is spinning out of control.
The Questions:
Why are we always in such a hurry?
What is the cure for time sickness?
Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down?
Realizing the price we all pay for unrelenting speed, people all over the world are reclaiming their time and slowing down the pace----and living happier, healthier, and more productive and dynamic lives as a result. And in business, is it not all about improving results?
In our work at Dynamic Results, with our diverse sect of clients, you will find no Luddite call to overthrow technology and seek a pre-industrial utopia.
We understand that we live in a modern revolution, championed by cell-phone-using, e-mailing lovers of sanity. The premise of much of what we do with our clients can be summed up in a single word----balance.
It is my view that many colleagues, clients, family and friends are rediscovering energy and efficiency where they have been least expected---in slowing down.
The Process: The first step is to evaluate the results you are getting in your life professionally and personally.
- If you are not getting the results you want (e.g. good health, caring relationships, mutual benefiting business relationships, happiness, joy and growth opportunities) in your life, review intensely how you are behaving prior to the result occurring. If you are unable to identify these behaviors, ask a trusted friend and/or family member to become your “mirror.” Request them to watch you during meetings, as you interact with people, as you “race” through your day. Have them experience you and your responses to life’s pressures and demands.
- Once you have identified the behavior or behaviors that are keeping you from getting the results you desire, then it is time to identify what you are thinking/feeling prior to behaving in such a way that prevents you from attaining the results you want in your life.
Here is something upon which to reflect. What a person feels drives what they think about, and subsequently their thoughts drive their behaviors.
Basically we have two ways to respond to the events that happen in our lives. An event, as I am defining it, is any stimuli to which you owe it an immediate response; anything that gets your attention. Someone cuts you off in traffic on your way to work. That is an event. How you respond, there is the challenge. How have you responded; especially when in a rush to get to work?
At Dynamic Results we work with our clients to develop them into emotionally intelligent professionals. Non-cognitive skills like impulse control, reality testing, problem solving and empathy are just a few the non-thinking skills we bring to our clients daily thinking, providing them with the skills to create the balance critical to a healthy life.
Before we go any further, though, let’s make one thing clear: this article is not a declaration of war against speed.
Speed has helped to remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating.
Who wants to live without the Internet and jet travel? The problem is that our love of speed, our obsession with doing more and more in less and less time, has gone too far; it has turned into an addiction, a kind of idolatry. Even when speed starts to backfire, we invoke the go-faster gospel.
Falling behind at work? Get a quicker Internet connection. No time for that novel you got at Christmas? Learn to speed read or buy the executive summary. Diet not working? Try liposuction take one of the many pills offered on t.v. Too busy to cook? Buy a microwave or order take-out.
And yet some things can not, should not, be sped up. They take time; they need slowness. When we accelerate things that should not be accelerated, when you forget how to slow down, there is a price to pay.
And that is where we at Dynamic Results focus our work; on the price our clients had been paying for success versus the costs of their new investment---balance.
The next article will focus on the human cost of turbo-capitalism. These days, we exist to serve the economy, rather than the other way around. Long hours on the job are making us unproductive, error-prone, unhappy and ill. Doctor’s offices are swamped with people suffering from conditions brought on by stress: insomnia, migraines, hypertension, asthma and gastrointestinal trouble, to name but a few.
The current work culture is also undermining our mental health. Burnout used to be something mainly found in people over forty. As a performance coach, I now see men and women in their thirties and twenties who are completely burned out.
Could that be you?
Bob Anderson
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