My rule of three: If I notice something three times, I pay extra attention.
I've pondered lately how Expectations affect my perception of time. I want my next book out now, and the next three drafted, and the next three researched, and why does everything take so long?! Keeping in mind my first novel took years to write, a better question is why do I have the expectation I can achieve a similar level of quality in only one? Just when my frustration was hitting a peak, messages of Slowness appeared in quick succession. My conclusion? Good things take time. And that's a good thing. 1. The Power of Patience: Teaching Students the Value of Deceleration and Immersive Attention by Jennifer L. Roberts "I want to focus...on creating opportunities for students to engage in deceleration, patience, and immersive attention. I would argue these are the kind of practices that need to be actively engineered because they are no longer available 'in nature.' Every external pressure, social and technological, is pushing students toward immediacy, rapidity, and spontaneity. I want to give them the permission and the structures to slow down." 2. Lessons From an 85 Year Old About Technology by Cristina Daura
"Here’s why I remember things. We were taught to memorize in school. This is what I hate about modern education. Kids are no longer memorizing poetry, or anything else, because technology makes it so they don’t have to.
For centuries, the only way to pass on knowledge was orally. There was no writing or reading. And so they memorized whole sagas, the entire culture of a tribe. We have totally lost that ability, and that, to me, is a real tragedy."
3. Affirmations for a Calm Mind by Jason Stephenson "Slowing down feels good for me."
(This is the only explicit reference to slowness in the entire meditation, and came on a morning I had begun to think of the two previous articles in relation to each other and to slowness.) Click here to sign up for my sporadic newsletter, "On Three."