IS EVERYTHING SLOWER NOW?
In the purported aftermath of the Covidularity—[right, invented,] it’s been a persistent experience for me for things to be slowing down. Items of the trade that we’re in, strategy, design and production—paper, for example—hard to find, some mills are shut down; and, then there’s trucking—delayed shipments, I just heard a new one, yesterday afternoon. “sorry, we lost that truck, we’re trying to find it—we think it’s in Portland.”
The other element that’s a persistent challenge is—“we’ll get back to you…” We understood an expected expediency—“speed counts on this project.” There was urgency, or there once was, then somehow, the timelines slide out, further and further. Budgeting is stretched, payments are lengthened, and everything achieves laxity. To that, then, a new pace—that’s slower.
I think about some of my writing, slow-down and I realize, in a manner, I’ve talked about this repeatedly. That would be the nature of wandering. A wander, like the wind, it variable and susceptible to conditions of transition, masses that slow things down—better to watch, walk slowly, study and savor your surrounding, embrace the slower stride—see more in that slow journeying. That idea you can find captured here—wander, wonder, wisdom.
Some amongst you would say—
“why worry? Just relax…”
In the incipient need for speed
that rattles through the channels of our experience,
could that potentially
be
slowed
way
down?
To see and sense more?
That comes to
take a moment.
While in the brand world, there’s fast.
And there’s slow.
When I travel, working on brands around the world,
I try to come into a place slow.
Going slow, slowing my way in:
slowdown—
waiting in reception, chatting with visitors, watching people, studying that I work for, and with—how they move, think, react; and how they act together, and how they treat each other.
I take it in.
I watch others coming into the offices, the shops, the meeting places.
Slowing down, I look at the floor,
Slower, I study the ceiling,
I watch the light —
the walls, the scent of everything;
I sense the heat of the place.
the people moving-in,
and those moving out.
Patterns and messages. Energy trails.
Flow, round—and around.
Round again, and through—following the trails.
And time dissolves, watching slower means, of course,
that you have to be on,
and in,
time.
However that momentum might express its motion.
Really, any journeyer shall have to be early—get there, get anywhere,
to absorb the energies around you.
Being early, time will tell the quieter story.
Time, told.
That can’t be done,
except superficially, quickly.
As in studying a tableau,
a tapestry,
there is a granularity in the weave that is detailed—
that requires focus and care; there would be an intentionality of review.
Speed derails
that movement
of study.
Slow down, and you settle into the milieu.
You can see
them.
The players,
the people that are there,
in symphony with their environment—cacophonous or harmonic.
Those flows count for something in the analytical notations of experience design strategy — gaggles of laughter tell a story, postures and the gait of people tells another story to freedom.
Faces.
And the eyes have it.
Slow down, observe more, stride more slowly
into the framing of place, people, light, movement and energy.
Details count.
Everything tells you something,
if you’re listening.
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