0:00:01.000,0:00:03.000
What I'd like to start off with is an observation,

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
which is that if I've learned anything over the last year,

0:00:05.000,0:00:07.000
it's that the supreme irony

0:00:07.000,0:00:09.000
of publishing a book about slowness

0:00:09.000,0:00:11.000
is that you have to go around promoting it really fast.

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
I seem to spend most of my time these days

0:00:14.000,0:00:17.000
zipping from city to city, studio to studio,

0:00:17.000,0:00:19.000
interview to interview,

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
serving up the book in really tiny bite-size chunks.

0:00:21.000,0:00:23.000
Because everyone these days

0:00:23.000,0:00:25.000
wants to know how to slow down,

0:00:25.000,0:00:28.000
but they want to know how to slow down really quickly. So ...

0:00:28.000,0:00:30.000
so I did a spot on CNN the other day

0:00:30.000,0:00:33.000
where I actually spent more time in makeup than I did talking on air.

0:00:34.000,0:00:36.000
And I think that -- that's not really surprising though, is it?

0:00:36.000,0:00:38.000
Because that's kind of the world that we live in now,

0:00:38.000,0:00:41.000
a world stuck in fast-forward.

0:00:41.000,0:00:43.000
A world obsessed with speed,

0:00:43.000,0:00:46.000
with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more

0:00:46.000,0:00:48.000
into less and less time.

0:00:48.000,0:00:50.000
Every moment of the day feels like

0:00:50.000,0:00:52.000
a race against the clock.

0:00:52.000,0:00:54.000
To borrow a phrase from Carrie Fisher, which is

0:00:54.000,0:00:56.000
in my bio there; I'll just toss it out again --

0:00:56.000,0:00:59.000
"These days even instant gratification takes too long." (Laughter)

0:00:59.000,0:01:01.000
And

0:01:01.000,0:01:03.000
if you think about how we to try to make things better, what do we do?

0:01:03.000,0:01:06.000
No, we speed them up, don't we? So we used to dial; now we speed dial.

0:01:06.000,0:01:09.000
We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk.

0:01:09.000,0:01:12.000
And of course, we used to date and now we speed date.

0:01:12.000,0:01:15.000
And even things that are by their very nature slow --

0:01:15.000,0:01:18.000
we try and speed them up too.

0:01:18.000,0:01:20.000
So I was in New York recently, and I walked past a gym

0:01:20.000,0:01:22.000
that had an advertisement in the window for a new course, a new evening course.

0:01:23.000,0:01:26.000
And it was for, you guessed it, speed yoga.

0:01:26.000,0:01:29.000
So this -- the perfect solution for time-starved professionals

0:01:29.000,0:01:31.000
who want to, you know, salute the sun,

0:01:31.000,0:01:33.000
but only want to give over about 20 minutes to it.

0:01:34.000,0:01:36.000
I mean, these are sort of the extreme examples,

0:01:36.000,0:01:38.000
and they're amusing and good to laugh at.

0:01:38.000,0:01:40.000
But there's a very serious point,

0:01:40.000,0:01:43.000
and I think that in the headlong dash of daily life,

0:01:43.000,0:01:46.000
we often lose sight of the damage

0:01:46.000,0:01:49.000
that this roadrunner form of living does to us.

0:01:49.000,0:01:52.000
We're so marinated in the culture of speed

0:01:52.000,0:01:54.000
that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes

0:01:54.000,0:01:56.000
on every aspect of our lives --

0:01:56.000,0:01:58.000
on our health, our diet, our work,

0:01:58.000,0:02:01.000
our relationships, the environment and our community.

0:02:01.000,0:02:03.000
And sometimes it takes

0:02:03.000,0:02:05.000
a wake-up call, doesn't it,

0:02:05.000,0:02:08.000
to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives,

0:02:08.000,0:02:10.000
instead of actually living them; that we're

0:02:10.000,0:02:12.000
living the fast life, instead of the good life.

0:02:12.000,0:02:14.000
And I think for many people, that wake-up call

0:02:14.000,0:02:16.000
takes the form of an illness.

0:02:16.000,0:02:19.000
You know, a burnout, or eventually the body says,

0:02:19.000,0:02:21.000
"I can't take it anymore," and throws in the towel.

0:02:21.000,0:02:23.000
Or maybe a relationship goes up in smoke

0:02:23.000,0:02:25.000
because we haven't had the time, or the patience,

0:02:25.000,0:02:27.000
or the tranquility,

0:02:27.000,0:02:29.000
to be with the other person, to listen to them.

0:02:29.000,0:02:31.000
And my wake-up call came when I started

0:02:31.000,0:02:34.000
reading bedtime stories to my son,

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
and I found that at the end of day,

0:02:36.000,0:02:39.000
I would go into his room and I just couldn't slow down -- you know,

0:02:39.000,0:02:41.000
I'd be speed reading "The Cat In The Hat."

0:02:41.000,0:02:43.000
I'd be -- you know, I'd be skipping lines here,

0:02:43.000,0:02:45.000
paragraphs there, sometimes a whole page,

0:02:45.000,0:02:48.000
and of course, my little boy knew the book inside out, so we would quarrel.

0:02:48.000,0:02:51.000
And what should have been the most relaxing, the most intimate,

0:02:51.000,0:02:53.000
the most tender moment of the day,

0:02:53.000,0:02:56.000
when a dad sits down to read to his son,

0:02:56.000,0:02:59.000
became instead this kind of gladiatorial battle of wills,

0:02:59.000,0:03:01.000
a clash between my speed

0:03:01.000,0:03:04.000
and his slowness.

0:03:04.000,0:03:06.000
And this went on for some time,

0:03:06.000,0:03:08.000
until I caught myself scanning a newspaper article

0:03:08.000,0:03:10.000
with timesaving tips for fast people.

0:03:10.000,0:03:12.000
And one of them made reference to a series of books called

0:03:12.000,0:03:14.000
"The One-Minute Bedtime Story."

0:03:14.000,0:03:17.000
And I wince saying those words now,

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.000
but my first reaction at the time was very different.

0:03:19.000,0:03:21.000
My first reflex was to say,

0:03:21.000,0:03:23.000
"Hallelujah -- what a great idea!

0:03:23.000,0:03:26.000
This is exactly what I'm looking for to speed up bedtime even more."

0:03:26.000,0:03:28.000
But thankfully,

0:03:28.000,0:03:30.000
a light bulb went on over my head, and my next reaction was very different,

0:03:31.000,0:03:33.000
and I took a step back, and I thought,

0:03:33.000,0:03:35.000
"Whoa -- you know, has it really come to this?

0:03:35.000,0:03:37.000
Am I really in such a hurry that I'm prepared

0:03:37.000,0:03:40.000
to fob off my son with a sound byte at the end of the day?"

0:03:41.000,0:03:43.000
And I put away the newspaper --

0:03:43.000,0:03:45.000
and I was getting on a plane -- and I sat there,

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
and I did something I hadn't done for a long time -- which is I did nothing.

0:03:47.000,0:03:50.000
I just thought, and I thought long and hard.

0:03:50.000,0:03:53.000
And by the time I got off that plane, I'd decided I wanted to do something about it.

0:03:53.000,0:03:56.000
I wanted to investigate this whole roadrunner culture,

0:03:56.000,0:03:59.000
and what it was doing to me and to everyone else.

0:03:59.000,0:04:01.000
And I had two questions in my head.

0:04:01.000,0:04:04.000
The first was, how did we get so fast?

0:04:04.000,0:04:06.000
And the second is, is it possible,

0:04:06.000,0:04:09.000
or even desirable, to slow down?

0:04:09.000,0:04:11.000
Now, if you think about

0:04:11.000,0:04:14.000
how our world got so accelerated, the usual suspects rear their heads.

0:04:14.000,0:04:16.000
You think of, you know, urbanization,

0:04:16.000,0:04:19.000
consumerism, the workplace, technology.

0:04:19.000,0:04:21.000
But I think if you cut through

0:04:21.000,0:04:24.000
those forces, you get to what might be the deeper

0:04:24.000,0:04:27.000
driver, the nub of the question,

0:04:27.000,0:04:29.000
which is how we think about time itself.

0:04:29.000,0:04:32.000
In other cultures, time is cyclical.

0:04:32.000,0:04:35.000
It's seen as moving in great,

0:04:35.000,0:04:37.000
unhurried circles.

0:04:37.000,0:04:39.000
It's always renewing and refreshing itself.

0:04:39.000,0:04:41.000
Whereas in the West, time is linear.

0:04:41.000,0:04:43.000
It's a finite resource;

0:04:43.000,0:04:45.000
it's always draining away.

0:04:45.000,0:04:47.000
You either use it, or lose it.

0:04:47.000,0:04:50.000
"Time is money," as Benjamin Franklin said.

0:04:50.000,0:04:52.000
And I think what that does to us psychologically

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
is it creates an equation.

0:04:54.000,0:04:56.000
Time is scarce, so what do we do?

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
Well -- well, we speed up, don't we?

0:04:58.000,0:05:00.000
We try and do more and more with less and less time.

0:05:00.000,0:05:02.000
We turn every moment of every day

0:05:02.000,0:05:04.000
into a race to the finish line --

0:05:04.000,0:05:07.000
a finish line, incidentally, that we never reach,

0:05:07.000,0:05:09.000
but a finish line nonetheless.

0:05:09.000,0:05:11.000
And I guess that the question is,

0:05:11.000,0:05:13.000
is it possible to break free from that mindset?

0:05:13.000,0:05:15.000
And thankfully, the answer is yes, because

0:05:15.000,0:05:17.000
what I discovered, when I began looking around, that there is

0:05:17.000,0:05:20.000
a global backlash against this culture that

0:05:20.000,0:05:23.000
tells us that faster is always better, and that busier is best.

0:05:23.000,0:05:26.000
Right across the world, people are doing the unthinkable:

0:05:26.000,0:05:28.000
they're slowing down, and finding that,

0:05:28.000,0:05:31.000
although conventional wisdom tells you that if you slow down, you're road kill,

0:05:31.000,0:05:33.000
the opposite turns out to be true:

0:05:33.000,0:05:35.000
that by slowing down at the right moments,

0:05:35.000,0:05:37.000
people find that they do everything better.

0:05:37.000,0:05:40.000
They eat better; they make love better; they exercise better;

0:05:40.000,0:05:43.000
they work better; they live better.

0:05:43.000,0:05:46.000
And, in this kind of cauldron

0:05:46.000,0:05:49.000
of moments and places and acts of deceleration,

0:05:49.000,0:05:52.000
lie what a lot of people now refer to as

0:05:52.000,0:05:54.000
the "International Slow Movement."

0:05:54.000,0:05:57.000
Now if you'll permit me a small act of hypocrisy,

0:05:59.000,0:06:02.000
I'll just give you a very quick overview of

0:06:02.000,0:06:05.000
what's going on inside the Slow Movement. If you think of food,

0:06:05.000,0:06:07.000
many of you will have heard of the Slow Food movement.

0:06:07.000,0:06:09.000
Started in Italy, but has spread across the world,

0:06:09.000,0:06:11.000
and now has 100,000 members

0:06:11.000,0:06:13.000
in 50 countries.

0:06:13.000,0:06:16.000
And it's driven by a very simple and sensible message,

0:06:16.000,0:06:19.000
which is that we get more pleasure and more health

0:06:19.000,0:06:21.000
from our food when we

0:06:21.000,0:06:25.000
cultivate, cook and consume it at a reasonable pace.

0:06:25.000,0:06:27.000
I think also the explosion of

0:06:27.000,0:06:30.000
the organic farming movement, and the renaissance of farmers' markets,

0:06:30.000,0:06:33.000
are other illustrations

0:06:33.000,0:06:36.000
of the fact that people are desperate to get away from

0:06:36.000,0:06:38.000
eating and cooking and cultivating their food

0:06:38.000,0:06:40.000
on an industrial timetable.

0:06:40.000,0:06:43.000
They want to get back to slower rhythms.

0:06:43.000,0:06:46.000
And out of the Slow Food movement has grown something

0:06:46.000,0:06:49.000
called the Slow Cities movement, which has started in Italy,

0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000
but has spread right across Europe and beyond.

0:06:51.000,0:06:53.000
And in this, towns

0:06:53.000,0:06:56.000
begin to rethink how they organize the urban landscape,

0:06:56.000,0:06:59.000
so that people are encouraged to slow down

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
and smell the roses and connect with one another.

0:07:01.000,0:07:03.000
So they might curb traffic,

0:07:03.000,0:07:06.000
or put in a park bench, or some green space.

0:07:06.000,0:07:09.000
And in some ways, these changes add up to more than the sum of their parts,

0:07:09.000,0:07:12.000
because I think when a Slow City becomes officially a Slow City,

0:07:12.000,0:07:14.000
it's kind of like a philosophical declaration.

0:07:14.000,0:07:17.000
It's saying to the rest of world, and to the people in that town,

0:07:17.000,0:07:19.000
that we believe that in the 21st century,

0:07:19.000,0:07:23.000
[br]slowness has a role to play.

0:07:23.000,0:07:25.000
In medicine, I think a lot of people are deeply disillusioned

0:07:25.000,0:07:27.000
with the kind of quick-fix mentality

0:07:27.000,0:07:29.000
you find in conventional medicine.

0:07:29.000,0:07:31.000
And millions of them around the world are turning

0:07:31.000,0:07:34.000
to complementary and alternative forms of medicine,

0:07:34.000,0:07:36.000
which tend to tap into sort of

0:07:36.000,0:07:39.000
slower, gentler, more holistic forms of healing.

0:07:39.000,0:07:42.000
Now, obviously the jury is out on many of these complementary therapies,

0:07:42.000,0:07:45.000
and I personally doubt that the coffee enema

0:07:45.000,0:07:48.000
will ever, you know, gain mainstream approval.

0:07:48.000,0:07:50.000
But other treatments

0:07:50.000,0:07:53.000
such as acupuncture and massage, and even just relaxation,

0:07:53.000,0:07:55.000
clearly have some kind of benefit.

0:07:55.000,0:07:57.000
And blue-chip medical colleges everywhere

0:07:57.000,0:08:00.000
are starting to study these things to find out how they work,

0:08:00.000,0:08:02.000
and what we might learn from them.

0:08:02.000,0:08:04.000
Sex. There's an awful lot of fast sex around, isn't there?

0:08:04.000,0:08:07.000
I was coming to --

0:08:07.000,0:08:10.000
well -- no pun intended there.

0:08:10.000,0:08:13.000
I was making my way, let's say, slowly to Oxford,

0:08:13.000,0:08:15.000
and I went through a news agent, and I saw a magazine,

0:08:15.000,0:08:17.000
a men's magazine, and it said on the front,

0:08:17.000,0:08:20.000
"How to bring your partner to orgasm in 30 seconds."

0:08:20.000,0:08:22.000
So, you know, even sex

0:08:22.000,0:08:24.000
is on a stopwatch these days.

0:08:24.000,0:08:26.000
Now, you know,

0:08:26.000,0:08:28.000
I like a quickie as much as the next person,

0:08:28.000,0:08:31.000
but I think that there's an awful lot to be gained

0:08:31.000,0:08:33.000
from slow sex -- from slowing down in the bedroom.

0:08:33.000,0:08:36.000
You know, you tap into that -- those deeper,

0:08:36.000,0:08:39.000
sort of, psychological, emotional, spiritual currents,

0:08:39.000,0:08:42.000
and you get a better orgasm with the buildup.

0:08:42.000,0:08:44.000
You can get more bang for your buck, let's say.

0:08:44.000,0:08:47.000
I mean, the Pointer Sisters said it most eloquently, didn't they,

0:08:47.000,0:08:50.000
when they sang the praises of "a lover with a slow hand."

0:08:50.000,0:08:52.000
Now, we all laughed at Sting

0:08:52.000,0:08:54.000
a few years ago when he went Tantric,

0:08:54.000,0:08:57.000
but you fast-forward a few years, and now you find couples of all ages

0:08:57.000,0:08:59.000
flocking to workshops, or maybe just

0:08:59.000,0:09:02.000
on their own in their own bedrooms, finding ways

0:09:02.000,0:09:05.000
to put on the brakes and have better sex.

0:09:05.000,0:09:07.000
And of course, in Italy where -- I mean, Italians always seem to know

0:09:07.000,0:09:09.000
where to find their pleasure --

0:09:09.000,0:09:12.000
they've launched an official Slow Sex movement.

0:09:13.000,0:09:15.000
The workplace.

0:09:15.000,0:09:17.000
Right across much of the world --

0:09:17.000,0:09:19.000
North America being a notable exception --

0:09:19.000,0:09:21.000
working hours have been coming down.

0:09:21.000,0:09:23.000
And Europe is an example of that,

0:09:23.000,0:09:26.000
and people finding that their quality of life improves

0:09:26.000,0:09:28.000
as they're working less, and also

0:09:28.000,0:09:30.000
that their hourly productivity goes up.

0:09:30.000,0:09:32.000
Now, clearly there are problems with

0:09:32.000,0:09:34.000
the 35-hour workweek in France --

0:09:34.000,0:09:36.000
too much, too soon, too rigid.

0:09:36.000,0:09:39.000
But other countries in Europe, notably the Nordic countries,

0:09:39.000,0:09:41.000
are showing that it's possible

0:09:41.000,0:09:43.000
to have a kick-ass economy

0:09:43.000,0:09:45.000
without being a workaholic.

0:09:45.000,0:09:47.000
And Norway, Sweden,

0:09:47.000,0:09:49.000
Denmark and Finland now rank

0:09:49.000,0:09:52.000
among the top six most competitive nations on Earth,

0:09:52.000,0:09:54.000
and they work the kind of hours that would make the average American

0:09:54.000,0:09:56.000
weep with envy.

0:09:56.000,0:09:59.000
And if you go beyond sort of the country level,

0:09:59.000,0:10:01.000
down at the micro-company level,

0:10:01.000,0:10:02.000
more and more companies now are realizing

0:10:02.000,0:10:04.000
that they need to allow their staff

0:10:04.000,0:10:06.000
either to work fewer hours or just to unplug --

0:10:06.000,0:10:09.000
to take a lunch break, or to go sit in a quiet room,

0:10:10.000,0:10:13.000
to switch off their Blackberrys and laptops -- you at the back --

0:10:14.000,0:10:16.000
mobile phones,

0:10:16.000,0:10:19.000
during the work day or on the weekend, so that they have time to recharge

0:10:19.000,0:10:21.000
and for the brain to slide into that

0:10:21.000,0:10:24.000
kind of creative mode of thought.

0:10:25.000,0:10:28.000
It's not just, though, these days,

0:10:28.000,0:10:30.000
adults who overwork, though, is it? It's children, too.

0:10:31.000,0:10:34.000
I'm 37, and my childhood ended in the mid-'80s,

0:10:34.000,0:10:36.000
and I look at kids now, and I'm just amazed by the way they

0:10:36.000,0:10:38.000
race around with more homework,

0:10:38.000,0:10:40.000
more tutoring, more extracurriculars

0:10:40.000,0:10:43.000
than we would ever have conceived of a generation ago.

0:10:43.000,0:10:45.000
And some of the most heartrending emails

0:10:45.000,0:10:47.000
that I get on my website

0:10:47.000,0:10:50.000
are actually from adolescents

0:10:50.000,0:10:52.000
hovering on the edge of burnout, pleading with me

0:10:52.000,0:10:54.000
to write to their parents,

0:10:54.000,0:10:57.000
to help them slow down, to help them get off this

0:10:57.000,0:11:00.000
full-throttle treadmill.

0:11:00.000,0:11:02.000
But thankfully, there is a backlash there in parenting as well,

0:11:02.000,0:11:04.000
and you're finding that, you know, towns in the United States

0:11:04.000,0:11:07.000
are now banding together and banning extracurriculars

0:11:07.000,0:11:09.000
on a particular day of the month, so that people can,

0:11:09.000,0:11:12.000
you know, decompress and have some family time, and slow down.

0:11:13.000,0:11:16.000
Homework is another thing. There are homework bans

0:11:17.000,0:11:19.000
springing up all over the developed world

0:11:19.000,0:11:22.000
in schools which had been piling on the homework for years,

0:11:22.000,0:11:24.000
and now they're discovering that less can be more.

0:11:24.000,0:11:26.000
So there was a case up in Scotland recently

0:11:26.000,0:11:28.000
where a fee-paying, high-achieving private school

0:11:28.000,0:11:30.000
banned homework

0:11:30.000,0:11:32.000
for everyone under the age of 13,

0:11:32.000,0:11:34.000
and the high-achieving parents freaked out and said,

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
"What are you -- you know, our kids will fall" -- the headmaster said,

0:11:36.000,0:11:39.000
"No, no, your children need to slow down at the end of the day."

0:11:39.000,0:11:42.000
And just this last month, the exam results came in,

0:11:42.000,0:11:45.000
and in math, science, marks went up 20 percent

0:11:45.000,0:11:47.000
on average last year.

0:11:47.000,0:11:49.000
And I think what's very revealing is that

0:11:49.000,0:11:52.000
the elite universities, who are often cited as the reason

0:11:52.000,0:11:54.000
that people drive their kids and hothouse them so much,

0:11:54.000,0:11:57.000
are starting to notice the caliber of students

0:11:57.000,0:12:00.000
coming to them is falling. These kids have wonderful marks;

0:12:00.000,0:12:03.000
they have CVs jammed with extracurriculars,

0:12:03.000,0:12:05.000
to the point that would make your eyes water.

0:12:05.000,0:12:07.000
But they lack spark; they lack

0:12:07.000,0:12:09.000
the ability to think creatively and think outside --

0:12:09.000,0:12:12.000
they don't know how to dream. And so what these Ivy League schools,

0:12:12.000,0:12:14.000
and Oxford and Cambridge and so on, are starting to send a message

0:12:14.000,0:12:17.000
to parents and students that they need to put on the brakes a little bit.

0:12:17.000,0:12:20.000
And in Harvard, for instance, they send out

0:12:20.000,0:12:23.000
a letter to undergraduates -- freshmen --

0:12:23.000,0:12:26.000
telling them that they'll get more out of life, and more out of Harvard,

0:12:26.000,0:12:28.000
if they put on the brakes, if they do less,

0:12:28.000,0:12:31.000
but give time to things, the time that things need,

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
to enjoy them, to savor them.

0:12:33.000,0:12:35.000
And even if they sometimes do nothing at all.

0:12:35.000,0:12:37.000
And that letter is called -- very revealing, I think --

0:12:37.000,0:12:40.000
"Slow Down!" -- with an exclamation mark on the end.

0:12:40.000,0:12:43.000
So wherever you look, the message, it seems to me, is the same:

0:12:43.000,0:12:45.000
that less is very often more,

0:12:45.000,0:12:48.000
that slower is very often

0:12:48.000,0:12:50.000
better. But that said, of course,

0:12:50.000,0:12:52.000
it's not that easy to slow down, is it?

0:12:52.000,0:12:54.000
I mean, you heard that I got a speeding ticket

0:12:54.000,0:12:56.000
while I was researching my book on the benefits of slowness,

0:12:56.000,0:12:58.000
and that's true, but that's not all of it.

0:12:58.000,0:13:00.000
I was actually en route to a dinner

0:13:00.000,0:13:02.000
held by Slow Food at the time.

0:13:02.000,0:13:05.000
And if that's not shaming enough, I got that ticket in Italy.

0:13:05.000,0:13:08.000
And if any of you have ever driven on an Italian highway,

0:13:08.000,0:13:10.000
you'll have a pretty good idea of how fast I was going.

0:13:10.000,0:13:13.000
(Laughter)

0:13:13.000,0:13:15.000
But why is it so hard to slow down?

0:13:15.000,0:13:17.000
I think there are various reasons.

0:13:17.000,0:13:20.000
One is that speed is fun, you know, speed is sexy.

0:13:20.000,0:13:23.000
It's all that adrenaline rush. It's hard to give it up.

0:13:23.000,0:13:25.000
I think there's a kind of metaphysical dimension --

0:13:25.000,0:13:27.000
that speed becomes a way of walling ourselves off

0:13:27.000,0:13:29.000
from the bigger, deeper questions.

0:13:29.000,0:13:31.000
We fill our head with distraction, with busyness,

0:13:31.000,0:13:33.000
so that we don't have to ask,

0:13:33.000,0:13:36.000
am I well? Am I happy? Are my children growing up right?

0:13:36.000,0:13:39.000
Are politicians making good decisions on my behalf?

0:13:40.000,0:13:42.000
Another reason -- although I think, perhaps, the most powerful reason --

0:13:42.000,0:13:45.000
why we find it hard to slow down is the cultural taboo

0:13:45.000,0:13:48.000
that we've erected against slowing down.

0:13:48.000,0:13:50.000
"Slow" is a dirty word in our culture.

0:13:50.000,0:13:52.000
It's a byword for "lazy," "slacker,"

0:13:52.000,0:13:54.000
for being somebody who gives up.

0:13:54.000,0:13:56.000
You know, "he's a bit slow." It's actually synonymous

0:13:56.000,0:13:59.000
with being stupid.

0:13:59.000,0:14:01.000
I guess what the Slow Movement -- the purpose of the Slow Movement,

0:14:01.000,0:14:03.000
or its main goal, really, is to tackle that taboo,

0:14:03.000,0:14:06.000
and to say that yes,

0:14:06.000,0:14:08.000
sometimes slow is not the answer,

0:14:08.000,0:14:10.000
that there is such a thing as "bad slow."

0:14:10.000,0:14:12.000
You know, I got stuck on the M25,

0:14:12.000,0:14:14.000
which is a ring road around London, recently,

0:14:14.000,0:14:16.000
and spent three-and-a-half hours there. And I can tell you,

0:14:16.000,0:14:18.000
that's really bad slow.

0:14:18.000,0:14:20.000
But the new idea,

0:14:20.000,0:14:22.000
the sort of revolutionary idea, of the Slow Movement,

0:14:22.000,0:14:24.000
is that there is such a thing as "good slow," too.

0:14:24.000,0:14:26.000
And good slow is, you know, taking the time

0:14:26.000,0:14:29.000
to eat a meal with your family, with the TV switched off.

0:14:29.000,0:14:32.000
Or taking the time to look at a problem from all angles

0:14:32.000,0:14:34.000
in the office to make the best decision

0:14:34.000,0:14:36.000
at work.

0:14:36.000,0:14:38.000
Or even simply just taking the time

0:14:38.000,0:14:40.000
to slow down

0:14:40.000,0:14:42.000
and savor your life.

0:14:42.000,0:14:45.000
Now, one of the things that I found most uplifting

0:14:45.000,0:14:48.000
about all of this stuff that's happened around the book

0:14:48.000,0:14:51.000
since it came out, is the reaction to it.

0:14:51.000,0:14:53.000
And I knew that when my book on slowness came out,

0:14:53.000,0:14:55.000
it would be welcomed by the New Age brigade,

0:14:55.000,0:14:58.000
but it's also been taken up, with great gusto,

0:14:58.000,0:15:00.000
by the corporate world -- you know,

0:15:00.000,0:15:02.000
business press, but also

0:15:02.000,0:15:04.000
big companies and leadership organizations.

0:15:04.000,0:15:07.000
Because people at the top of the chain, people like you, I think,

0:15:07.000,0:15:09.000
are starting to realize that there's too much

0:15:09.000,0:15:11.000
speed in the system,

0:15:11.000,0:15:14.000
there's too much busyness, and it's time to find,

0:15:14.000,0:15:18.000
or get back to that lost art of shifting gears.

0:15:18.000,0:15:20.000
Another encouraging sign, I think,

0:15:20.000,0:15:22.000
is that it's not just in the developed world

0:15:22.000,0:15:25.000
that this idea's been taken up. In the developing world,

0:15:25.000,0:15:27.000
in countries that are on the verge of making that leap

0:15:27.000,0:15:29.000
into first world status -- China, Brazil,

0:15:29.000,0:15:31.000
Thailand, Poland, and so on --

0:15:31.000,0:15:34.000
these countries have embraced the idea of the Slow Movement,

0:15:34.000,0:15:37.000
many people in them, and there's a debate going on

0:15:37.000,0:15:39.000
in their media, on the streets.

0:15:39.000,0:15:41.000
Because I think they're looking at the West, and they're saying,

0:15:41.000,0:15:44.000
"Well, we like that aspect of what you've got,

0:15:44.000,0:15:46.000
but we're not so sure about that."

0:15:46.000,0:15:48.000
So all of that said, is it,

0:15:48.000,0:15:51.000
I guess, is it possible?

0:15:51.000,0:15:54.000
That's really the main question before us today. Is it possible

0:15:54.000,0:15:56.000
to slow down? And

0:15:56.000,0:15:58.000
I'm happy to be able to say to you

0:15:58.000,0:16:00.000
that the answer is a resounding yes.

0:16:00.000,0:16:03.000
And I present myself as Exhibit A,

0:16:03.000,0:16:06.000
a kind of reformed and rehabilitated

0:16:06.000,0:16:08.000
speed-aholic.

0:16:08.000,0:16:10.000
I still love speed. You know, I live in London,

0:16:10.000,0:16:12.000
and I work as a journalist,

0:16:12.000,0:16:14.000
and I enjoy the buzz and the busyness,

0:16:14.000,0:16:16.000
and the adrenaline rush that comes from both of those things.

0:16:16.000,0:16:18.000
I play squash and ice hockey,

0:16:18.000,0:16:21.000
two very fast sports, and I wouldn't give them up for the world.

0:16:22.000,0:16:25.000
But I've also, over the last year or so,

0:16:25.000,0:16:27.000
got in touch with my inner tortoise.

0:16:27.000,0:16:28.000
(Laughter)

0:16:28.000,0:16:30.000
And what that means is that

0:16:30.000,0:16:33.000
I no longer

0:16:33.000,0:16:36.000
overload myself gratuitously.

0:16:36.000,0:16:39.000
My default mode is no longer

0:16:39.000,0:16:41.000
to be a rush-aholic.

0:16:42.000,0:16:44.000
I no longer hear

0:16:44.000,0:16:46.000
time's winged chariot drawing near,

0:16:46.000,0:16:48.000
or at least not as much as I did before.

0:16:48.000,0:16:51.000
I can actually hear it now, because I see my time is ticking off.

0:16:52.000,0:16:54.000
And the upshot of all of that is that

0:16:54.000,0:16:57.000
I actually feel a lot happier, healthier,

0:16:57.000,0:17:00.000
more productive than I ever have.

0:17:00.000,0:17:02.000
I feel like I'm living

0:17:02.000,0:17:05.000
my life rather than actually just racing through it.

0:17:06.000,0:17:08.000
And perhaps, the most important

0:17:08.000,0:17:10.000
measure of the success of this

0:17:10.000,0:17:13.000
is that I feel that my relationships are a lot deeper,

0:17:13.000,0:17:15.000
richer, stronger.

0:17:15.000,0:17:18.000
And for me, I guess, the litmus test

0:17:18.000,0:17:20.000
for whether this would work, and what it would mean,

0:17:20.000,0:17:23.000
was always going to be bedtime stories, because that's sort of where

0:17:23.000,0:17:26.000
the journey began. And there too the news is

0:17:26.000,0:17:28.000
rosy. You know,

0:17:28.000,0:17:30.000
at the end of the day, I go into my son's room.

0:17:30.000,0:17:32.000
I don't wear a watch. I switch off my computer,

0:17:32.000,0:17:34.000
so I can't hear the email pinging into the basket,

0:17:34.000,0:17:37.000
and I just slow down to his pace and we read.

0:17:38.000,0:17:41.000
And because children have their own tempo and internal clock,

0:17:41.000,0:17:43.000
they don't do quality time,

0:17:43.000,0:17:45.000
where you schedule 10 minutes for them to open up to you.

0:17:45.000,0:17:48.000
They need you to move at their rhythm.

0:17:48.000,0:17:50.000
I find that 10 minutes into a story, you know,

0:17:50.000,0:17:52.000
my son will suddenly say, "You know,

0:17:52.000,0:17:54.000
something happened in the playground today that really bothered me."

0:17:54.000,0:17:57.000
And we'll go off and have a conversation on that.

0:17:57.000,0:18:00.000
And I now find that bedtime stories

0:18:00.000,0:18:02.000
used to be

0:18:02.000,0:18:05.000
a box on my to-do list, something that I dreaded,

0:18:05.000,0:18:07.000
because it was so slow and I had to get through it quickly.

0:18:07.000,0:18:09.000
It's become my reward at the end of the day,

0:18:09.000,0:18:11.000
something I really cherish.

0:18:11.000,0:18:13.000
And I have a kind of Hollywood ending

0:18:13.000,0:18:15.000
to my talk this afternoon,

0:18:15.000,0:18:17.000
which goes a little bit like this:

0:18:17.000,0:18:20.000
a few months ago, I was getting ready to go on

0:18:20.000,0:18:23.000
another book tour, and I had my bags packed.

0:18:23.000,0:18:26.000
I was downstairs by the front door, and I was waiting for a taxi,

0:18:26.000,0:18:28.000
and my son came down the stairs and

0:18:28.000,0:18:30.000
he'd made a card for me. And he was carrying it.

0:18:30.000,0:18:32.000
He'd gone and stapled two cards, very like these, together,

0:18:32.000,0:18:35.000
and put a sticker of his favorite

0:18:35.000,0:18:37.000
character, Tintin, on the front.

0:18:37.000,0:18:39.000
And he said to me,

0:18:39.000,0:18:41.000
or he handed this to me, and I read it,

0:18:41.000,0:18:43.000
and it said, "To Daddy, love Benjamin."

0:18:43.000,0:18:46.000
And I thought, "Aw, that's really sweet.

0:18:46.000,0:18:49.000
Is that a good luck on the book tour card?"

0:18:49.000,0:18:51.000
And he said, "No, no, no, Daddy -- this is a card

0:18:51.000,0:18:53.000
for being the best story reader in the world."

0:18:53.000,0:18:56.000
And I thought, "Yeah, you know, this slowing down thing really does work."

0:18:56.000,0:18:57.000
Thank you very much.