In the 1950’s labor-saving devices came onto the mass market. Technology promised relief from drudgery so we could enjoy more rewarding activities. To a certain extent this has happened. By the early 1960’s the future looked like we might only need to work two days a week. Muscle power lost its value as machines took over repetitive tasks. At the time, there was serious debate about what would we do with all this leisure. Of course, it didn’t happen. Parkinson’s Law prevailed. Our material expectations grew proportionally.

Britain’s new National Health Service came into being in the late 1940’s. But its scope was limited to combating the most widespread and contagious diseases. Architects of the system never expected every possible medical condition would be included. But the public wanted more. Expectations ratcheted up. And so it goes. The more we get, the more we want.

This is true for our conception of time, too. In the developed world we habitually attempt to cram more activities into a shorter space of time. Despite the often personal cost, we consider this an achievement. That’s because we define ourselves by what we do, not by what we are.

But if doing more doesn’t lead to sustainable enjoyment, then perhaps we should think about alternatives. Entertainment is quick, relatively speaking. But the pleasure it brings rarely lasts. It takes time to cultivate personal satisfaction and develop on-going interests. Mastery is a commitment to process, not goal orientation.

What do you do? At one time asking this question of a stranger would have been considered rude. Our social identities become a score card in a game many of us would rather not play.This sort of status transaction is meant to identify our position in a hierarchy.

But social or professional identity says little about our individuality, satisfaction, and our ability to generate pleasure. When we play the competitive-prestige game we miss interesting, curious, and meaningful connections. Real connection with another person unfolds over time.

Our conceptions of time varies. Time is the enemy. Time is money. We think of time as a commodity, something to use, a non-renewable resource. But any struggle against “Time” will ultimately end in failure. Time always wins. Living beings don’t exist forever. Time wears down mountains, causes continents to drift apart, and galaxies to live and die. This can be unsettling to contemplate. Some of us redouble our efforts to do more.

Constant distraction keeps us from ourselves. We hurtle though life concerning ourselves with the minutia and practicalities of our immediate situations; fantasizing about the future or imagining the past. Our productive-entertainment culture fosters this behavior, so slowing down is uncharted territory—which is what this website is about, albeit tongue in cheek. We fear what will happen with free time. It may be true that boredom is its own antidote, because boredom, like failure, is a necessary transitional and personal developmental state.

When speed becomes a habit—as it is in the business world—mistakes mount. Efficiency and effectiveness get conflated. Speed is valuable and necessary in some contexts.But to automatically assume faster is better is a mistake. Shakespeare said, “marry in haste, repent at leisure.” Decision-making in complex or unfamiliar situations need reflection and that means going slower. The impulse-driven can only react. Not all situations call for efficiency.

We deplore waiting as a waste of time. We wait for trains, in doctors’ offices, at airports. We flee from unstructured time. We try to fill every fatiguing moment with telephone conversations, digital entertainment, or reading. But these unstructured opportunities can be enjoyable by cultivating the art of waiting, noticing, and being present: a time to get to know ourselves.

Each of us is unique. We inhabit a personal world. Our experience is ours alone. Yet we behave as if we are identical to others. Mass culture promotes this idea of an undifferentiated self. Moreover, this illusion is reinforced because we tend to clump in groups of like-minded people. We have a collective blind spot.

Contact and connection are vital to a living human, but we can miss the point of our individuality when striving to become something other that what we are. We can become so enthralled with an imaginary future and how we think we will feel that we can miss the present. This is not to say that we should ignore the future. We can’t.

All living creatures project themselves into the future. The fox, hunting the rabbit, has a sense of a future meal. The point here is moderation and balance. Yet obsession with the future and the past leaves no time for the present. The garage full of junk leaves no room to park the car.

William James said something to the effect that risking ourselves from moment to moment is our state of aliveness. Making sense of something simply means to recognize and categorize it. If we only pay attention to what we know—what we can make sense of—we will never embark on a journey into the unknown.

Genuinely new situations are by definition unfamiliar. Sometimes we are quick to judge these unfamiliar states-of-being as confusion, simply because they are new. And self-discovery is a time-intensive project in life-long learning.

Understanding our personal boundaries doesn’t mean limiting ourselves. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The French philosopher Michel Foucault believed that we need to transgress our boundaries in order to know what they are. This is dangerous thinking. It’s like the beginning chess player who doesn’t understand the consequences of her move and hopes for the best. Chess takes time to learn and so does self-knowledge.

We live in an aspirational culture. Only by understanding our boundaries can we make informed decisions what is right for us as individuals, not what “should” be. When we don’t understand ourselves we copy other people. Our desires are not our desires but those we think we should have. And part of that “should” is an efficient, reactive, and productive individual.

In emergencies or when we are under threat we need extreme behavior. But urgency—real life and death situations— are the exception for most of us. A life lived on adrenaline is likely to be nasty, brutish, and short. Events call for different responses. Sometimes our boundaries need to be rigid, at other times they call for porosity. But effective responsiveness to situations requires a degree of self-knowledge. And without that, it’s almost impossible to recognize the uniqueness of another human being.

Josef Pieper, a twentieth century philosopher, wrote Leisure, The Basis of Culture more than fifty years ago. Leisure allows time for contemplation and creation beyond what is necessary for mere survival. Pieper warns against the “Total World of Work,” that if we continue to ignore the need for leisure we will destroy our culture and be less human.

The promise of technology was liberation and freedom. But we have chosen another path. Do we need to stay on it? And that’s worth taking the time to think about—slowly.