Re: Slow Days
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 10:42:53 -0700 (PDT)

On May 15, 2006, at 5:43 AM, Rachael Shapiro wrote:


What it is: A once a month EXPERIMENT on a specific weekend day, for 1
or 2 months, in which we choose as a community to have no meetings, no
expected email communication, and to minimize (or eliminate!) computer
and car use. It would NOT be expected that everyone would need to
consense upon or engage in Slow Day, but that many, hopefully large
numbers, of people in the community would honor it.

This is similar to quiet hours instituted in some corporations -- no telephone calls, meetings, walking about, etc. between 1:00 and 2:00 or whatever. Some neighborhoods used to do this in the days when mothers stayed home - no kids on the street from 1:00-3:00 or whatever so they would all take naps undisturbed. All kids inside by 7:00 so the little ones would go to bed.

A friend of a friend was a Wallstreet banker who insisted on staying home late in the mornings to have breakfast with his kids before he took them to school. The markets open early so this was a big professional sacrifice but it was more doable than trying to leave the office early. And he had a wonderful relationship with his kids.

One reason I discourage telephone calls all together is that they are such an interruption. I find them necessary only when I need immediate attention to something. Email is so much easier (and silent). I can respond to several messages in the time it takes to respond to one phone call. And one phone call is never one anyway -- it's phone tag.

I started my own slow time years ago by refusing to do any work after 7:00. After years of teaching where you work all day at the "office" and then go home and work a second job of research and writing, I just quit. When I moved into cohousing that got screwed up by evening meetings but I have been firm about not going to meetings that start at 9:00 -- I never get to sleep afterwards! Then I changed my expectations about when cohousing meetings could occur and discovered that lots of people work at home and can do meetings in the morning or on weekends.

The only suggestion I would make for slow days is to do them weekly -- more likely to really make a change in your life.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org


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