A minimalist home is composed of the stuff that resides in it and where it is placed. A minimalist lifestyle encompasses more than our stuff: our relationships, our calendars, our to-do lists, etc. It considers our time allocation based on priorities and our emotional bandwidth. But we often don’t think about the pace of our lives. That’s the next level of how we want to allocate time. It speaks to the quality and tone of the time we’re spending, how much we can fit into that time, and our emotions (e.g., stress caused by feeling rushed).
I often think about this quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on "good" rather than on “time"....” Feeling rushed or being worried about the next appointment or even moving faster than what feels good is counter to setting a good pace in life. Minimizing time spent at the cost of its quality is not minimalism.
If you’ve ever scheduled meetings back to back, thinking they wouldn't run over or affect your emotional state, you know that the pace of life is not often considered but can have an effect on our state of being. How we live our lives is not just what we fit into them, but the way time moves and how we move with it.
Slow Living reflects this sentiment. Much like the Meaningful Minimalism approach I take here at Less Equals More, slow living focuses on developing a mindset based on meaning, values, self-reflection, well-defined priorities, and awareness. These are the cornerstones of making day-to-day decisions. It’s the opposite of being on autopilot. The Slow Living movement generally emerged in the 1980s, beginning with the Slow Food movement (a response to a McDonald’s opening in Rome- you get the gist) and later expanded to a holistic life approach. The movement now invites us to rethink our approach to our living rhythms and, instead, to see abundance as a gift to savor. In other words, go at the right speed, not the fastest speed.
Of course, there are times when the pace becomes abrupt, but these emergency or unexpected moments should be the exception, not the norm. If you develop a Slow Living mindset and minimalist lifestyle, you’ll handle these situations with greater ease and resilience.
I think about pace in my own life. When I have an appointment outside of my home, earlier in the day, I think about whether I need to pack anything for it and what otherwise needs to be accomplished before I leave. I build in buffer time before I need to go because my least favorite quality of time is rushed. I put infrastructure in place to minimize when this happens. This is pace at a micro level.
Then, there’s the overall pace of life. I noticed last month that my pace felt overwhelming and rushed. Not just in the micro-moments but in the overall vibe, the sensibility, and the resulting “I can’t even think about this now.” Pace adjustments are positioned against a multitude of decisions you make about your calendar, to-do list, etc. It takes awareness to figure out how to integrate those components and your feelings about them (“I can’t wait to do this” versus “I feel like I should do this”). But even the “I can’t wait to’s” can come at a cost to your desired pace. This is where minimalism helps a lot. Cutting out less important physical stuff and time-sucking tasks leaves more room to consider what you’d like as a foundation for your slower life.
Slowness is relative. Slowing down to allow for intentionality may be different for you than others. Much like minimalism, there’s no one way to adopt slow living. Slow living means being present in almost every moment and enjoying it without feeling the need to think about what's next. Thinking about what's next has its time when you are planning. Once planning is thoughtfully completed, you can enjoy each event and be fully present.
As you develop and iterate your minimalist lifestyle, don’t only look at what you’re doing but look at the pace at which you’re doing it. What does that look like on a practical level? What does that look like on an emotional or sensory level? How do you approach your calendar and address buffer time? If you plan a trip, can you work in the time you’ll need to prep for and recover from it? These are only some of the questions in an ongoing, multi-faceted process. The answers will position you to have a life of truly quality time.