The Importance of Slowing Down

If you're anything like me, you probably feel a constant need to do something productive. It nags at you whenever you sit down, or engage in a hobby, asking you how this is contributing to your future or your ambitions. It's not, you realize, and quickly chastise yourself for daring to engage in a moment of purposeless joy, shifting your focus to the much more adult responsibilities of optimizing your every waking minute for maximum productivity and financial gain.

This has been a lifelong struggle of mine, and many other creatives that I've met. A constant battle against ones' own inner critic that you could be doing something better, always.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've felt this pretty strongly, trying to turn every moment of every day into a means for production. Time is money, after all. It's nothing I'm not used to, as I said this has been a lifelong struggle of mine that ebbs and flows with the seasons of the year. But if there is anything I've learned throughout the process, especially over these past few weeks, it's the importance of slowing down.

This can look different for everyone, but for me, I was reaching a point where I was trying to assign more purpose to each hobby or activity I was participating in, which began to lead to me not actively enjoying them nearly as much as I would have otherwise. I've slowly been doing better with it, and in turn I've felt significant increases in my creative output and overall mood. Maybe I just needed a long weekend to figure that out though.

I was able to play the new DOOM game without feeling like I was wasting time by not writing my novel and just turning it off. I taught Nova how to play Soccer (as much as you can teach a golden retriever, anyway). And so much more. I was able to do all of these things guilt-free, and just be completely present in the moment, something I worried I forgot how to do.

I think sometimes we forget that those nonproductive, recharging moments are equally important, if not more, to our production and creativity. They're what allow us to work at our best, but without them it slowly starts to lose meaning.

Life is short, and our time is limited. It's ok to spend some of it on you and the things you love.

So if you haven't already, slow down, the world will wait.

~Brandon