Slow Work

Mountains of Arizona
Rain 71 Degrees
9:13 a.m.

I was obsessed with fast work for a long time. Everything I learned and everything I listened to suggested that was the route to success.

Do it more and faster.

Fast work is “getting things done” type of work. Fast work is work that goes on a todo list. It’s stuff you “check off.” It’s work that gives your brain that sense of being “productive.”

The crazy thing about fast work is that you can do it, say for an entire year, and still not actually get anywhere.

I might not believe that was possible had I not experienced it for so many years.

I was “all in” on fast work and totally oblivious to slow work.

Slow work doesn’t go on a todo list.

Because slow work isn’t something you get done in a day or a week or a month.

Slow work includes things like learning to concentrate your power, developing the ability to sustain focused intention, working through your unintegrated garbage that serves as a lens through which you interact with the world.

I don’t remember reading about this stuff in business books.

The closest they get to it is “mindset.” They cordon it off up there in your brain to make it and easy, simple and nice and neat thing to talk about.

But slow work doesn’t fit into a meme. You can’t make a bumper sticker out of it, or a hashtag or a daily affirmation.

It’s not “saleable,” it’s only doable.

Is it worth doing?

Well, if you consider that this energetic foundation that you touch/reconfigure with “slow work” can’t NOT affect all that “fast work” and even whether or not it leads you somewhere, then it makes sense to pay attention to it if not spend lots of time doing it.

You’re not going to get noticed for doing it.

You won’t win an award.

No one will even know it’s going on.

But your life, business and everything you touch may very well be transformed right before your eyes.

Don’t get stuck in the world of “fast work.” Lots of third parties need you to live in that space.

THEY need you there, you don’t need you there.