(How To) Slow. The F*ck. Down.
Seven super practical tips (I promise meditation is not one of them).
In Part 1, I talked about your company exploits hustle culture and manufactured urgency to keep you in a state of fight-or-flight that makes you more amenable to having your time and your attention stolen from you.
Part of the solution to this is learning how to slow down, so that you can engage your critical thinking, be present in what you’re working on, and show up fully in all areas of your life—both at the office and at home.
In Part 2 here, we’re going to talk about 7 super practical tips and tricks I have used (to varying degrees of success) that help me slow down.
This list is descriptive, not prescriptive. These are some things that have worked (or not) for me, but you may have a different experience, and that’s okay! If only one of these actually feels useful or appealing, then take it and ignore the rest.
So how the f*ck do we slow the f*ck down, exactly?
Slowing down will feel counter-productive at first, until you realize that you’re accomplishing just as much, if not more, when you’re not in a state of panic. Keep that in mind as you practice and try out these exercises.
Here are some practical things that have worked for me—and a few that haven’t:
1: Pay attention to your typing and/or handwriting.
Are your hands or forearms tense? Are you pounding the keys, rushing, and backspacing a lot because you’re making mistakes with speed? Gripping the pen so hard your fingers hurt? Try slowing down. Breathe. Press the keys gently and notice how it feels.
2: Slow your walking pace to a stroll.
This one seems silly but is a big deal for me. My “natural” (read: learned) walking pace is basically speed-walking. When I started paying attention, I noticed that I was speed-walking in a rush everywhere—even in my own home. Slowing my pace to a stroll brings my attention back to my body and reminds me I don’t have to rush.
3: Turn off all notifications you can live without.
My computer can only give me on-screen/audio notifications for 3 things:
Calendar reminders or incoming conference calls ringing because a meeting or time block on my calendar is about to start.
My Apple Reminders, which I use to make sure I don’t forget a time-bound task that’s important for personal life outside work.
My Flow app, which I use for Pomodoro timers. This has been a serious help for me as an ADHDer who has trouble with task initiation.
Nothing else—and I mean NOTHING ELSE—is allowed to send me any kind of visual or audio notification. Ever.
No on-screen notifications from Outlook or Slack a new message has come in. No badge tells me I have X unreads. No app badge at all - there is absolutely zero visual or audio notification in my desktop tray that I have anything waiting on me anywhere.
This seems small, but I swear to you, it’s probably the thing that has made the biggest impact for me. Why?
Because getting out of fight-or-flight means reducing the sense of over-stimulation as much as possible.
“But what if it’s urgent?” You might ask.
Listen. If it’s life-or-death, they’ll find you. Not once have I ever missed a Slack message or an email that couldn’t have waited until I came back from whatever I was working on.
(As a side bonus: you will never again have to worry about an embarrassing Slack message or confidential email preview coming through while you’re presenting something on-screen).
4: Morning Pages.
More than any other habit, this has brought clarity and slowness to my life. It’s a practice I learned from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Here’s how it works:
Every morning (it has to be morning) you sit down with paper and pen and you write 3 pages. It can be 3 pages of anything you want - you can treat it like a journal, or you can simply write a stream-of-consciousness brain dump (which is usually what I do). The point is to not self-censor, to keep your hand moving, and never re-read them. Just get it out of your head and put it away.
I notice an incredible difference in how I go about my day when I do this. It slows me down but it also allows my brain to “flush” everything weighing it down.
Doing this consistently for about 9 months brought a level of clarity about what I actually wanted from my life that no self-help book, seminar, or paid program ever has. I promise you: you’ll discover yourself in a new way.
Morning Pages are my time, before the world puts its demands on me. The practice reminds me that my time and energy belong to me—not someone else.
5: Box Breathing.
This one is popular and consistently recommended by mental health professionals and doctors alike.
Imagine a square with 4 sides and map your breathing to it. Inhale 4 seconds. Hold 4 seconds. Exhale 4 seconds. Hold 4 Seconds. Repeat.
This exercise brings your focus back to your body and helps you calm the physical fight-or-flight response.
This is one of the ones that works less well for me, because I usually find myself obsessing over whether I am counting from 1-4 at a consistent speed or whether I’m kicking off each breath/hold at the exact “right” time (and yes, I am aware that sounds ridiculous, but that’s my brain 🤷🏼♂️).
6: Use noise-canceling headphones with binaural beats or ambient mood music to your advantage.
This is all about (1) reducing the amount of external stimulation coming at you and (2) creating a mood into which your brain and body can relax.
Binaural beats have been helpful for me at work. When I need to focus on a task that’s very brainpower-intensive and I’m feeling a bit rushed or anxious about it, listening to binaural beats with noise-canceling headphones has been huge.
I also use ambient music with my noise-canceling headphones to create a relaxed, slow mood for myself when I’m commuting to and from work. Low-key ambient music really helps to calm me down with a full-body effect.
This is particularly helpful in the darker fall/winter months, when stress can be high due to peak sales periods. My favorite playlist is dark ambient on Spotify.
Finally, I use brown noise to be present when I either want to do something creative—or, ironically—something uninteresting like cleaning my house. There’s something about it that really puts me in a zone of concentration. I’m present with what I’m doing, rather than trying to rush through to finish it.
7. Be an absolutely ruthless b*tch / pr*ck with your calendar.
“Hey, do you have five minutes?”
Nope, I sure do not. Because I know it’s never five minutes, or even 30 minutes, to “hop on a quick call” for a drive-by like that.
And because I know that drive-by issue could very well de-rail the rest of my day and prevent me from getting done what I planned to get done.
I have a general rule that I do not allow unscheduled meetings to invade my calendar same-day, unless it is a life-or-death situation.
I decline same-day meetings or requests for help on things like these:
A new campaign idea they are super excited about
A problem with a process they’d like to discuss
A advertising campaign issue that isn’t time-sensitive
A meeting someone wants me to join last-minute to give my perspective
A question someone has about how to solve a problem or topic that is not time-sensitive.
Giving last-minute inputs or feedback for leadership doc reviews that have been scheduled for weeks.
Essentially what you’re doing here is forcing other people—and yourself—to respect your time.
Your CEO does not operate in a world where they’re constantly allowing their time and schedule to be de-railed. They protect their calendar, and you should too, even if you’re not high on the totem pole.
Protecting your time over the long-term this way will increase your sense of control and self-possession at work. That means less anxiousness about how your day is going to go, and less anxiousness means a relaxed body and brain that doesn’t feel a need to rush.
The goal here is to learning slow down - so be patient with yourself if it takes time.
It’s going to take time to figure out which strategies, tips, and tactics work well for you, because everyone is different. So try not to treat this as a race with a medal and a finish line labeled “Slow, Regulated Living.”
Instead, think of it as a series of experiments and exploration you get to engage in to discover what works best for you over time and as your life goes through changes.
Over time, you’ll discover what “slowing down” looks like for you - and how it might look different during particular phases of your life and career.
Just being conscious of it and paying attention to it in your daily life—even in tiny small ways like noticing how fast you’re walking—adds up fast.
You can learn to slow down faster than you think (see what I did there?).