Slowing down workaholic style
I appreciate being healthy. I feel for so many people that don’t have my luck. And I think health is largely luck. Isn’t good health the most precious of gifts? I think so, and the last thing I want to do is moan and groan about something a trivial as a cough. I’ve got one. This is day seventeen. Not that I’m counting. All right, I am counting.
A doctor friend of mine would brook no moaning about trivial diseases. If your arm wasn’t hanging off or you weren’t a candidate for the emergency room, in his opinion, you were a hypochondriac. I used to play squash with this fellow. His wife told me of coming upon him in the bathroom. She thought he was shaving. That was until she realize he was calmly sewing up a squash-inflicted gash across his eyebrow.
Squash is one of those games that insurance companies don’t really like you playing. I was hit in the head with the ball during a game. It hurt. Good players hit the ball with their racket. But soon I felt better. That was until about 2 a.m. when I woke up with a raging headache on one side of my head. My doctor friend (who, by the way, had hit me with the ball) did come and look at me. He rather nonchalantly thought I had a migraine headache or a brain tumor. Frankly, this scared the willies out of me.
It so happened I recovered and felt no other side effects. Now some people I know may believe that this event is the reason for my general lack of intelligence and inability to maintain a suitable standard of kitchen hygiene. It’s always wise to have something to point to as evidence during a marital discussion. I have since abandoned gladiatorial squash for slightly safer badminton. For a fellow in his mid-fifties, this makes sense. Well, some sense.
I’ve heard it said that, for us in the West, illness is our meditation. Nothing else can slow some of us down and it’s those workaholics that need to slow down most. Many of us only slow down enough to stare at the ceiling from a hospital bed. This is surely workaholic slowing down. I say, slow down now, before it’s too late.
Thank you to the superbly intelligent and kind person who just bought a slowdownnow.org t-shirt. May your slowness increase.
Your posts are always a breath of fresh air - and you missed your calling as a comedian!
Thanks for the laugh.
CGDotNet
Thank you. I think that is what it is all about really. Down with seriousness. There is too much of it about.
Chris… loving the correlation between a squash-related accident and a diminished standard of kitchen hygiene!
Regarding you post generally, I think you are pretty much right about ill health being the only incentive to slow down amongst workaholics… although I would suggest that for a true, steadfast, dyed-in-the-wool example of this strange breed of human being, even this isn’t enough.
Just one small point… if there was ever such a thing as a Workaholics Anonymous meeting (perhaps there is), would it go something like this…? :
“My name is Jane Smith and I’m a—damn, is that the time?! Sorry, gotta go, time is money, places to go, people to see, etc, etc, etc…”
Dan,
I can just picture the WA meeting. You gave me a good laugh.
Thank you.
I’ve been meeting quite a few people lately, running around, agonising over their situation. They go on ranting and rationalising, obsessing over whatever it is they’re facing. I just tell them to slow down, sit with it, step back and have a look. But they seem to only do that once they run head on into a wall.
It takes more courage to slow down and notice how stuck you are, instead of running, working, ‘doing something about it’.
nice article, good writer thx
Apz,
Salespeople are taught to focus on a prospect’s pain. That is, no pain, no sale. Pain could be no more than a perception of missing out on something. The salesperson’s job is not so much to make what they are selling more attractive, but to focus on the problem and the pain it causes. At least this is the way insurance is sold.
I expect you’ve heard the expression, “Things will get better before they get worse.” Often, the pain has to be severe before anything gets done about it. I agree with your point about courage.
Thanks for the kind words.
Funnily enough, Chris, I’ve just posted a piece on my blog where I mention the following advertising slogan which I spotted on my way to work this morning…
“Blue Tooth - switch on or miss out.”
That whole “missing out” thing again!
I think the key (well, one of the keys) to being slow is in realising that you are actually “missing out” on life if you go so fast that it all just rushes past in a blur…
…and, of course, in more direct relation to the above, if you spend so much time farting about with your “Blue Tooth devices” that you don’t notice what’s going on in the *real* world!
Hey Christopher, you know what doctors say……”there’s a lot of it about!” Me too. Been coughing for more days than I’ve been counting. Haven’t woken at night with coughing for four nights now though so definitely on the mend. I agree with your take home message here though. Let’s slow down BEFORE we get sick instead of AFTER!
Get well soon!
Thanks for the healing words. The scriptwriters on, “The fall and rise of Reginald Perrin,” wrote the part of the perplexed doctor very well. The doctor would ask his patient a series of question about
the symptoms. The patient would enthusiastically answer in the affirmative as each symptom was described in the sure knowledge that the doctor had identified his condition. Only then the doctor would say, “I’ve got the same thing, I wonder what it could be?”
This is definitely a slow cough and it’s put me back with my writing schedule. I have a Monday deadline for a magazine article on how slowing down can make you smart. Sadly, I have to speed up to finish it.
Any post mentioning squash is a good one, heh. Illness is indeed the only time many folks slow down to truly think/ponder. I’ve been making it a point to truly meditate on a regular basis to stay in good health…both mentally and physically.
Practise is the key to slowing down. Using the word slow makes it sound like a negative - so need to cushion it with something! I am in a hospital bed - and for sure slowing down was and has been on the agenda and there was never enough time to do that.
21 days immobilised in bed gave me a one on one communication with my creator. This frenzy pace is BS.
I am at the point of no return. Nothing to go back to. Only forward.
I will never be the same again. I have clarity.
Pse pse do something before you get a wake up call. Dont press snooze