1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000 What I'd like to start off with is an observation, 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:05,000 which is that if I've learned anything over the last year, 3 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:07,000 it's that the supreme irony 4 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:09,000 of publishing a book about slowness 5 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:11,000 is that you have to go around promoting it really fast. 6 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:14,000 I seem to spend most of my time these days 7 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:17,000 zipping from city to city, studio to studio, 8 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:19,000 interview to interview, 9 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:21,000 serving up the book in really tiny bite-size chunks. 10 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000 Because everyone these days 11 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:25,000 wants to know how to slow down, 12 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000 but they want to know how to slow down really quickly. So ... 13 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:30,000 so I did a spot on CNN the other day 14 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000 where I actually spent more time in makeup than I did talking on air. 15 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:36,000 And I think that -- that's not really surprising though, is it? 16 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:38,000 Because that's kind of the world that we live in now, 17 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:41,000 a world stuck in fast-forward. 18 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:43,000 A world obsessed with speed, 19 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:46,000 with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more 20 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:48,000 into less and less time. 21 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Every moment of the day feels like 22 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,000 a race against the clock. 23 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:54,000 To borrow a phrase from Carrie Fisher, which is 24 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:56,000 in my bio there; I'll just toss it out again -- 25 00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:59,000 "These days even instant gratification takes too long." (Laughter) 26 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000 And 27 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,000 if you think about how we to try to make things better, what do we do? 28 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:06,000 No, we speed them up, don't we? So we used to dial; now we speed dial. 29 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:09,000 We used to read; now we speed read. We used to walk; now we speed walk. 30 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:12,000 And of course, we used to date and now we speed date. 31 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,000 And even things that are by their very nature slow -- 32 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:18,000 we try and speed them up too. 33 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:20,000 So I was in New York recently, and I walked past a gym 34 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:22,000 that had an advertisement in the window for a new course, a new evening course. 35 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:26,000 And it was for, you guessed it, speed yoga. 36 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:29,000 So this -- the perfect solution for time-starved professionals 37 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:31,000 who want to, you know, salute the sun, 38 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:33,000 but only want to give over about 20 minutes to it. 39 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:36,000 I mean, these are sort of the extreme examples, 40 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:38,000 and they're amusing and good to laugh at. 41 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:40,000 But there's a very serious point, 42 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:43,000 and I think that in the headlong dash of daily life, 43 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:46,000 we often lose sight of the damage 44 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:49,000 that this roadrunner form of living does to us. 45 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:52,000 We're so marinated in the culture of speed 46 00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:54,000 that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes 47 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:56,000 on every aspect of our lives -- 48 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:58,000 on our health, our diet, our work, 49 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:01,000 our relationships, the environment and our community. 50 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:03,000 And sometimes it takes 51 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:05,000 a wake-up call, doesn't it, 52 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:08,000 to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives, 53 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:10,000 instead of actually living them; that we're 54 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:12,000 living the fast life, instead of the good life. 55 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:14,000 And I think for many people, that wake-up call 56 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:16,000 takes the form of an illness. 57 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:19,000 You know, a burnout, or eventually the body says, 58 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:21,000 "I can't take it anymore," and throws in the towel. 59 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:23,000 Or maybe a relationship goes up in smoke 60 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:25,000 because we haven't had the time, or the patience, 61 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:27,000 or the tranquility, 62 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:29,000 to be with the other person, to listen to them. 63 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:31,000 And my wake-up call came when I started 64 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:34,000 reading bedtime stories to my son, 65 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:36,000 and I found that at the end of day, 66 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:39,000 I would go into his room and I just couldn't slow down -- you know, 67 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:41,000 I'd be speed reading "The Cat In The Hat." 68 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:43,000 I'd be -- you know, I'd be skipping lines here, 69 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:45,000 paragraphs there, sometimes a whole page, 70 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:48,000 and of course, my little boy knew the book inside out, so we would quarrel. 71 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:51,000 And what should have been the most relaxing, the most intimate, 72 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:53,000 the most tender moment of the day, 73 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000 when a dad sits down to read to his son, 74 00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:59,000 became instead this kind of gladiatorial battle of wills, 75 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:01,000 a clash between my speed 76 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:04,000 and his slowness. 77 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:06,000 And this went on for some time, 78 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:08,000 until I caught myself scanning a newspaper article 79 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:10,000 with timesaving tips for fast people. 80 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:12,000 And one of them made reference to a series of books called 81 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:14,000 "The One-Minute Bedtime Story." 82 00:03:14,000 --> 00:03:17,000 And I wince saying those words now, 83 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:19,000 but my first reaction at the time was very different. 84 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:21,000 My first reflex was to say, 85 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:23,000 "Hallelujah -- what a great idea! 86 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:26,000 This is exactly what I'm looking for to speed up bedtime even more." 87 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:28,000 But thankfully, 88 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:30,000 a light bulb went on over my head, and my next reaction was very different, 89 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:33,000 and I took a step back, and I thought, 90 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:35,000 "Whoa -- you know, has it really come to this? 91 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,000 Am I really in such a hurry that I'm prepared 92 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:40,000 to fob off my son with a sound byte at the end of the day?" 93 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:43,000 And I put away the newspaper -- 94 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:45,000 and I was getting on a plane -- and I sat there, 95 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:47,000 and I did something I hadn't done for a long time -- which is I did nothing. 96 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:50,000 I just thought, and I thought long and hard. 97 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:53,000 And by the time I got off that plane, I'd decided I wanted to do something about it. 98 00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:56,000 I wanted to investigate this whole roadrunner culture, 99 00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:59,000 and what it was doing to me and to everyone else. 100 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:01,000 And I had two questions in my head. 101 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:04,000 The first was, how did we get so fast? 102 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:06,000 And the second is, is it possible, 103 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:09,000 or even desirable, to slow down? 104 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:11,000 Now, if you think about 105 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:14,000 how our world got so accelerated, the usual suspects rear their heads. 106 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:16,000 You think of, you know, urbanization, 107 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,000 consumerism, the workplace, technology. 108 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:21,000 But I think if you cut through 109 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:24,000 those forces, you get to what might be the deeper 110 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,000 driver, the nub of the question, 111 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,000 which is how we think about time itself. 112 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:32,000 In other cultures, time is cyclical. 113 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:35,000 It's seen as moving in great, 114 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:37,000 unhurried circles. 115 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,000 It's always renewing and refreshing itself. 116 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:41,000 Whereas in the West, time is linear. 117 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:43,000 It's a finite resource; 118 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:45,000 it's always draining away. 119 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:47,000 You either use it, or lose it. 120 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:50,000 "Time is money," as Benjamin Franklin said. 121 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:52,000 And I think what that does to us psychologically 122 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:54,000 is it creates an equation. 123 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:56,000 Time is scarce, so what do we do? 124 00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:58,000 Well -- well, we speed up, don't we? 125 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:00,000 We try and do more and more with less and less time. 126 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,000 We turn every moment of every day 127 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:04,000 into a race to the finish line -- 128 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:07,000 a finish line, incidentally, that we never reach, 129 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:09,000 but a finish line nonetheless. 130 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:11,000 And I guess that the question is, 131 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:13,000 is it possible to break free from that mindset? 132 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:15,000 And thankfully, the answer is yes, because 133 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:17,000 what I discovered, when I began looking around, that there is 134 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:20,000 a global backlash against this culture that 135 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:23,000 tells us that faster is always better, and that busier is best. 136 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:26,000 Right across the world, people are doing the unthinkable: 137 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:28,000 they're slowing down, and finding that, 138 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:31,000 although conventional wisdom tells you that if you slow down, you're road kill, 139 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:33,000 the opposite turns out to be true: 140 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:35,000 that by slowing down at the right moments, 141 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:37,000 people find that they do everything better. 142 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:40,000 They eat better; they make love better; they exercise better; 143 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,000 they work better; they live better. 144 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:46,000 And, in this kind of cauldron 145 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:49,000 of moments and places and acts of deceleration, 146 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:52,000 lie what a lot of people now refer to as 147 00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:54,000 the "International Slow Movement." 148 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:57,000 Now if you'll permit me a small act of hypocrisy, 149 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:02,000 I'll just give you a very quick overview of 150 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,000 what's going on inside the Slow Movement. If you think of food, 151 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,000 many of you will have heard of the Slow Food movement. 152 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:09,000 Started in Italy, but has spread across the world, 153 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:11,000 and now has 100,000 members 154 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:13,000 in 50 countries. 155 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:16,000 And it's driven by a very simple and sensible message, 156 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:19,000 which is that we get more pleasure and more health 157 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:21,000 from our food when we 158 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000 cultivate, cook and consume it at a reasonable pace. 159 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:27,000 I think also the explosion of 160 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:30,000 the organic farming movement, and the renaissance of farmers' markets, 161 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:33,000 are other illustrations 162 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:36,000 of the fact that people are desperate to get away from 163 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:38,000 eating and cooking and cultivating their food 164 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:40,000 on an industrial timetable. 165 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:43,000 They want to get back to slower rhythms. 166 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:46,000 And out of the Slow Food movement has grown something 167 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:49,000 called the Slow Cities movement, which has started in Italy, 168 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:51,000 but has spread right across Europe and beyond. 169 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:53,000 And in this, towns 170 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:56,000 begin to rethink how they organize the urban landscape, 171 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:59,000 so that people are encouraged to slow down 172 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:01,000 and smell the roses and connect with one another. 173 00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:03,000 So they might curb traffic, 174 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:06,000 or put in a park bench, or some green space. 175 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:09,000 And in some ways, these changes add up to more than the sum of their parts, 176 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:12,000 because I think when a Slow City becomes officially a Slow City, 177 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:14,000 it's kind of like a philosophical declaration. 178 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,000 It's saying to the rest of world, and to the people in that town, 179 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:19,000 that we believe that in the 21st century, 180 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:23,000 slowness has a role to play. 181 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:25,000 In medicine, I think a lot of people are deeply disillusioned 182 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:27,000 with the kind of quick-fix mentality 183 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:29,000 you find in conventional medicine. 184 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:31,000 And millions of them around the world are turning 185 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:34,000 to complementary and alternative forms of medicine, 186 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:36,000 which tend to tap into sort of 187 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:39,000 slower, gentler, more holistic forms of healing. 188 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:42,000 Now, obviously the jury is out on many of these complementary therapies, 189 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:45,000 and I personally doubt that the coffee enema 190 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:48,000 will ever, you know, gain mainstream approval. 191 00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:50,000 But other treatments 192 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:53,000 such as acupuncture and massage, and even just relaxation, 193 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:55,000 clearly have some kind of benefit. 194 00:07:55,000 --> 00:07:57,000 And blue-chip medical colleges everywhere 195 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:00,000 are starting to study these things to find out how they work, 196 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:02,000 and what we might learn from them. 197 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:04,000 Sex. There's an awful lot of fast sex around, isn't there? 198 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:07,000 I was coming to -- 199 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:10,000 well -- no pun intended there. 200 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:13,000 I was making my way, let's say, slowly to Oxford, 201 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:15,000 and I went through a news agent, and I saw a magazine, 202 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:17,000 a men's magazine, and it said on the front, 203 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:20,000 "How to bring your partner to orgasm in 30 seconds." 204 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:22,000 So, you know, even sex 205 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:24,000 is on a stopwatch these days. 206 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:26,000 Now, you know, 207 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:28,000 I like a quickie as much as the next person, 208 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:31,000 but I think that there's an awful lot to be gained 209 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:33,000 from slow sex -- from slowing down in the bedroom. 210 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:36,000 You know, you tap into that -- those deeper, 211 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:39,000 sort of, psychological, emotional, spiritual currents, 212 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:42,000 and you get a better orgasm with the buildup. 213 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:44,000 You can get more bang for your buck, let's say. 214 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:47,000 I mean, the Pointer Sisters said it most eloquently, didn't they, 215 00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:50,000 when they sang the praises of "a lover with a slow hand." 216 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:52,000 Now, we all laughed at Sting 217 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:54,000 a few years ago when he went Tantric, 218 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:57,000 but you fast-forward a few years, and now you find couples of all ages 219 00:08:57,000 --> 00:08:59,000 flocking to workshops, or maybe just 220 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:02,000 on their own in their own bedrooms, finding ways 221 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:05,000 to put on the brakes and have better sex. 222 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:07,000 And of course, in Italy where -- I mean, Italians always seem to know 223 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:09,000 where to find their pleasure -- 224 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:12,000 they've launched an official Slow Sex movement. 225 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:15,000 The workplace. 226 00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:17,000 Right across much of the world -- 227 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:19,000 North America being a notable exception -- 228 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:21,000 working hours have been coming down. 229 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:23,000 And Europe is an example of that, 230 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:26,000 and people finding that their quality of life improves 231 00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:28,000 as they're working less, and also 232 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:30,000 that their hourly productivity goes up. 233 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:32,000 Now, clearly there are problems with 234 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:34,000 the 35-hour workweek in France -- 235 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:36,000 too much, too soon, too rigid. 236 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:39,000 But other countries in Europe, notably the Nordic countries, 237 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:41,000 are showing that it's possible 238 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:43,000 to have a kick-ass economy 239 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:45,000 without being a workaholic. 240 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:47,000 And Norway, Sweden, 241 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:49,000 Denmark and Finland now rank 242 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:52,000 among the top six most competitive nations on Earth, 243 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:54,000 and they work the kind of hours that would make the average American 244 00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:56,000 weep with envy. 245 00:09:56,000 --> 00:09:59,000 And if you go beyond sort of the country level, 246 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:01,000 down at the micro-company level, 247 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:02,000 more and more companies now are realizing 248 00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:04,000 that they need to allow their staff 249 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:06,000 either to work fewer hours or just to unplug -- 250 00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:09,000 to take a lunch break, or to go sit in a quiet room, 251 00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:13,000 to switch off their Blackberrys and laptops -- you at the back -- 252 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:16,000 mobile phones, 253 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:19,000 during the work day or on the weekend, so that they have time to recharge 254 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:21,000 and for the brain to slide into that 255 00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:24,000 kind of creative mode of thought. 256 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:28,000 It's not just, though, these days, 257 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:30,000 adults who overwork, though, is it? It's children, too. 258 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:34,000 I'm 37, and my childhood ended in the mid-'80s, 259 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:36,000 and I look at kids now, and I'm just amazed by the way they 260 00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:38,000 race around with more homework, 261 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:40,000 more tutoring, more extracurriculars 262 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:43,000 than we would ever have conceived of a generation ago. 263 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:45,000 And some of the most heartrending emails 264 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:47,000 that I get on my website 265 00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:50,000 are actually from adolescents 266 00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:52,000 hovering on the edge of burnout, pleading with me 267 00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:54,000 to write to their parents, 268 00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:57,000 to help them slow down, to help them get off this 269 00:10:57,000 --> 00:11:00,000 full-throttle treadmill. 270 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:02,000 But thankfully, there is a backlash there in parenting as well, 271 00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:04,000 and you're finding that, you know, towns in the United States 272 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:07,000 are now banding together and banning extracurriculars 273 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:09,000 on a particular day of the month, so that people can, 274 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:12,000 you know, decompress and have some family time, and slow down. 275 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:16,000 Homework is another thing. There are homework bans 276 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:19,000 springing up all over the developed world 277 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:22,000 in schools which had been piling on the homework for years, 278 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:24,000 and now they're discovering that less can be more. 279 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:26,000 So there was a case up in Scotland recently 280 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:28,000 where a fee-paying, high-achieving private school 281 00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:30,000 banned homework 282 00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:32,000 for everyone under the age of 13, 283 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:34,000 and the high-achieving parents freaked out and said, 284 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:36,000 "What are you -- you know, our kids will fall" -- the headmaster said, 285 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:39,000 "No, no, your children need to slow down at the end of the day." 286 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:42,000 And just this last month, the exam results came in, 287 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:45,000 and in math, science, marks went up 20 percent 288 00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,000 on average last year. 289 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,000 And I think what's very revealing is that 290 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:52,000 the elite universities, who are often cited as the reason 291 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:54,000 that people drive their kids and hothouse them so much, 292 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,000 are starting to notice the caliber of students 293 00:11:57,000 --> 00:12:00,000 coming to them is falling. These kids have wonderful marks; 294 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:03,000 they have CVs jammed with extracurriculars, 295 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:05,000 to the point that would make your eyes water. 296 00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:07,000 But they lack spark; they lack 297 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:09,000 the ability to think creatively and think outside -- 298 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:12,000 they don't know how to dream. And so what these Ivy League schools, 299 00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:14,000 and Oxford and Cambridge and so on, are starting to send a message 300 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:17,000 to parents and students that they need to put on the brakes a little bit. 301 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:20,000 And in Harvard, for instance, they send out 302 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:23,000 a letter to undergraduates -- freshmen -- 303 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:26,000 telling them that they'll get more out of life, and more out of Harvard, 304 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,000 if they put on the brakes, if they do less, 305 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:31,000 but give time to things, the time that things need, 306 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:33,000 to enjoy them, to savor them. 307 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,000 And even if they sometimes do nothing at all. 308 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,000 And that letter is called -- very revealing, I think -- 309 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:40,000 "Slow Down!" -- with an exclamation mark on the end. 310 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,000 So wherever you look, the message, it seems to me, is the same: 311 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:45,000 that less is very often more, 312 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:48,000 that slower is very often 313 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,000 better. But that said, of course, 314 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:52,000 it's not that easy to slow down, is it? 315 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:54,000 I mean, you heard that I got a speeding ticket 316 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:56,000 while I was researching my book on the benefits of slowness, 317 00:12:56,000 --> 00:12:58,000 and that's true, but that's not all of it. 318 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:00,000 I was actually en route to a dinner 319 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:02,000 held by Slow Food at the time. 320 00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:05,000 And if that's not shaming enough, I got that ticket in Italy. 321 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:08,000 And if any of you have ever driven on an Italian highway, 322 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:10,000 you'll have a pretty good idea of how fast I was going. 323 00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:13,000 (Laughter) 324 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:15,000 But why is it so hard to slow down? 325 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:17,000 I think there are various reasons. 326 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:20,000 One is that speed is fun, you know, speed is sexy. 327 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:23,000 It's all that adrenaline rush. It's hard to give it up. 328 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:25,000 I think there's a kind of metaphysical dimension -- 329 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:27,000 that speed becomes a way of walling ourselves off 330 00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:29,000 from the bigger, deeper questions. 331 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:31,000 We fill our head with distraction, with busyness, 332 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:33,000 so that we don't have to ask, 333 00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:36,000 am I well? Am I happy? Are my children growing up right? 334 00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:39,000 Are politicians making good decisions on my behalf? 335 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:42,000 Another reason -- although I think, perhaps, the most powerful reason -- 336 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:45,000 why we find it hard to slow down is the cultural taboo 337 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:48,000 that we've erected against slowing down. 338 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:50,000 "Slow" is a dirty word in our culture. 339 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,000 It's a byword for "lazy," "slacker," 340 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:54,000 for being somebody who gives up. 341 00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:56,000 You know, "he's a bit slow." It's actually synonymous 342 00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:59,000 with being stupid. 343 00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:01,000 I guess what the Slow Movement -- the purpose of the Slow Movement, 344 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:03,000 or its main goal, really, is to tackle that taboo, 345 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:06,000 and to say that yes, 346 00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:08,000 sometimes slow is not the answer, 347 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:10,000 that there is such a thing as "bad slow." 348 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:12,000 You know, I got stuck on the M25, 349 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:14,000 which is a ring road around London, recently, 350 00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,000 and spent three-and-a-half hours there. And I can tell you, 351 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:18,000 that's really bad slow. 352 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:20,000 But the new idea, 353 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:22,000 the sort of revolutionary idea, of the Slow Movement, 354 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:24,000 is that there is such a thing as "good slow," too. 355 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:26,000 And good slow is, you know, taking the time 356 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:29,000 to eat a meal with your family, with the TV switched off. 357 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:32,000 Or taking the time to look at a problem from all angles 358 00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:34,000 in the office to make the best decision 359 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:36,000 at work. 360 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,000 Or even simply just taking the time 361 00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:40,000 to slow down 362 00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:42,000 and savor your life. 363 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:45,000 Now, one of the things that I found most uplifting 364 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,000 about all of this stuff that's happened around the book 365 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:51,000 since it came out, is the reaction to it. 366 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:53,000 And I knew that when my book on slowness came out, 367 00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:55,000 it would be welcomed by the New Age brigade, 368 00:14:55,000 --> 00:14:58,000 but it's also been taken up, with great gusto, 369 00:14:58,000 --> 00:15:00,000 by the corporate world -- you know, 370 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:02,000 business press, but also 371 00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:04,000 big companies and leadership organizations. 372 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:07,000 Because people at the top of the chain, people like you, I think, 373 00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:09,000 are starting to realize that there's too much 374 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:11,000 speed in the system, 375 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:14,000 there's too much busyness, and it's time to find, 376 00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:18,000 or get back to that lost art of shifting gears. 377 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:20,000 Another encouraging sign, I think, 378 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:22,000 is that it's not just in the developed world 379 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:25,000 that this idea's been taken up. In the developing world, 380 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:27,000 in countries that are on the verge of making that leap 381 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:29,000 into first world status -- China, Brazil, 382 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:31,000 Thailand, Poland, and so on -- 383 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,000 these countries have embraced the idea of the Slow Movement, 384 00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,000 many people in them, and there's a debate going on 385 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:39,000 in their media, on the streets. 386 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:41,000 Because I think they're looking at the West, and they're saying, 387 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:44,000 "Well, we like that aspect of what you've got, 388 00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:46,000 but we're not so sure about that." 389 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:48,000 So all of that said, is it, 390 00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:51,000 I guess, is it possible? 391 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,000 That's really the main question before us today. Is it possible 392 00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:56,000 to slow down? And 393 00:15:56,000 --> 00:15:58,000 I'm happy to be able to say to you 394 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:00,000 that the answer is a resounding yes. 395 00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:03,000 And I present myself as Exhibit A, 396 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:06,000 a kind of reformed and rehabilitated 397 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:08,000 speed-aholic. 398 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:10,000 I still love speed. You know, I live in London, 399 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:12,000 and I work as a journalist, 400 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:14,000 and I enjoy the buzz and the busyness, 401 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:16,000 and the adrenaline rush that comes from both of those things. 402 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:18,000 I play squash and ice hockey, 403 00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:21,000 two very fast sports, and I wouldn't give them up for the world. 404 00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:25,000 But I've also, over the last year or so, 405 00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:27,000 got in touch with my inner tortoise. 406 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:28,000 (Laughter) 407 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:30,000 And what that means is that 408 00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:33,000 I no longer 409 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:36,000 overload myself gratuitously. 410 00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:39,000 My default mode is no longer 411 00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:41,000 to be a rush-aholic. 412 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:44,000 I no longer hear 413 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:46,000 time's winged chariot drawing near, 414 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:48,000 or at least not as much as I did before. 415 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:51,000 I can actually hear it now, because I see my time is ticking off. 416 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:54,000 And the upshot of all of that is that 417 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:57,000 I actually feel a lot happier, healthier, 418 00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:00,000 more productive than I ever have. 419 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:02,000 I feel like I'm living 420 00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:05,000 my life rather than actually just racing through it. 421 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:08,000 And perhaps, the most important 422 00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:10,000 measure of the success of this 423 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,000 is that I feel that my relationships are a lot deeper, 424 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:15,000 richer, stronger. 425 00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:18,000 And for me, I guess, the litmus test 426 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:20,000 for whether this would work, and what it would mean, 427 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,000 was always going to be bedtime stories, because that's sort of where 428 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:26,000 the journey began. And there too the news is 429 00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:28,000 rosy. You know, 430 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:30,000 at the end of the day, I go into my son's room. 431 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000 I don't wear a watch. I switch off my computer, 432 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:34,000 so I can't hear the email pinging into the basket, 433 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:37,000 and I just slow down to his pace and we read. 434 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:41,000 And because children have their own tempo and internal clock, 435 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:43,000 they don't do quality time, 436 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,000 where you schedule 10 minutes for them to open up to you. 437 00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:48,000 They need you to move at their rhythm. 438 00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:50,000 I find that 10 minutes into a story, you know, 439 00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:52,000 my son will suddenly say, "You know, 440 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:54,000 something happened in the playground today that really bothered me." 441 00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:57,000 And we'll go off and have a conversation on that. 442 00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:00,000 And I now find that bedtime stories 443 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:02,000 used to be 444 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:05,000 a box on my to-do list, something that I dreaded, 445 00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:07,000 because it was so slow and I had to get through it quickly. 446 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:09,000 It's become my reward at the end of the day, 447 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:11,000 something I really cherish. 448 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:13,000 And I have a kind of Hollywood ending 449 00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:15,000 to my talk this afternoon, 450 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:17,000 which goes a little bit like this: 451 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:20,000 a few months ago, I was getting ready to go on 452 00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:23,000 another book tour, and I had my bags packed. 453 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:26,000 I was downstairs by the front door, and I was waiting for a taxi, 454 00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:28,000 and my son came down the stairs and 455 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,000 he'd made a card for me. And he was carrying it. 456 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:32,000 He'd gone and stapled two cards, very like these, together, 457 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:35,000 and put a sticker of his favorite 458 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:37,000 character, Tintin, on the front. 459 00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:39,000 And he said to me, 460 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,000 or he handed this to me, and I read it, 461 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:43,000 and it said, "To Daddy, love Benjamin." 462 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,000 And I thought, "Aw, that's really sweet. 463 00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:49,000 Is that a good luck on the book tour card?" 464 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:51,000 And he said, "No, no, no, Daddy -- this is a card 465 00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:53,000 for being the best story reader in the world." 466 00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:56,000 And I thought, "Yeah, you know, this slowing down thing really does work." 467 00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:57,000 Thank you very much.