We also reflected on the value of pushing “PAUSE” before jumping to a conclusion or making a decision.

On the origin of the word “decide”:  it comes from the “Middle English” word deciden (1350-1400), which literally means “to cut off”.    E.g., if you are faced with 4 possible courses of action, and you decide on one, it means you cut off the others.  You get rid of them – never to be thought about again.

You get the idea…

So as I was lying in my bed, opening the curtains and  seeing Devil’s Peak covered in mist and cloud at about 05:20, it was decision time.

I mentally pressed…the PAUSE button to consider my choices.

•  Stay in bed.
• Get up, shower and start working.
• Go for a walk, then grab a shower, meditate and then start working.

Then I thought… If I want to live a long, happy and fulfilling life, which of these choices has the best chance of getting me where I want to be?

I cut off the bed and the immediate shower.

The walk was very enjoyable and made me feel good about the choice I made and the options I cut off!

To quote Friedrich Nietzsche:  “He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how”.

Makes sense, so I keep strengthening my “why” – and then just do the “how”.

Enjoy cutting off the actions that don’t take you where you want to go!

One of our less fortunate brothers approaches me. Dirty clothes.
Kind of a crust around his lips. He puts out his hand to say
good morning and I take it.

His hand is sticky and I decline the shake-grab-shake option.

“Are you from Johannesburg?”, he asks for some strange reason.

“I am from Cape Town, and you?” I ask him.

“I come from Port Alfred.”, he says.

We talk about Port Alfred for a bit because I have been to East
London the previous Tuesday and tell him that I saw the road
signs to Port Alfred.

We reminisce about our shared Eastern Cape experiences, then he
asked me: “Where do you stay now?”

“Just up here in High Cape – and you?”

“It depends on the weather”, he says.

“If it is warm I sleep on the sidewalk or maybe under the bridge.
If it windy it is better to sleep just around the
corner from where we are now, and when it rains, I sleep in a
shop entrance to stay dry.”

It depends on the weather…

Now that really made me think about living a productive life…

What we do in any given moment should “depend on the weather” -
our personal “weather”.

We aren’t all the same. What works for you doesn’t work for
others.

You have your unique “productivity strange attractor”.

Without going into too much detail, this means that you need to
have certain things in place for productivity to “happen” for
you, just like certain conditions need to be in place for a
thunder storm to happen or the cloth to form on Table Mountain.

What are the things YOU have to have in place to be most
productive?

Write down things like… time for strategic thinking,
delegating as much as I can, listening to my favourite music,
having my private space, clear objectives, knowing what to do
next…

Writing down these things helps you to create your own set of
“conditions for productivity to happen – for ME”.

All (!) you have to do now is to take the responsibility to make
it happen – say YES to the things that help you enjoy a
productive life and say NO to everything else.

Your productivity depends on your weather…

35 000 cyclists descend on Cape Town for this famous spectacle.

One of the most often heard questions after the race is:”What was your time?”

Pages and pages of names and finish times are published a few days after the event, and people make promises to finish in a shorter time next year.

This is a rather linear way of looking at what this great event can bring.

How about asking questions like:

“Who did you meet along the way?”

“Did you also get the baboons at the turn off to Cape Point?”

“DId you pull off for that great massage at Tokai?”

It begs a response that is very different from the linear “so many hours and minutes” reply.

It begs a response about the experience of the experience…

The ancient Greeks, as I understand it, had three concepts/words for time:

* chronos: linear, measured, “clock” time.  1 hour + 1 hour = 2 hours.

* kairos: experiential time

* eon (aeon): An immeasurable or infinite space of time; eternity; a long space of time; an age (from www.dictionary.com)

From Wikipedia:

“While [chronos] refers to chronological or sequential time, [kairos] signifies a time in between, a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.”

I like this example: A golfer hits a hole-in-one. Or you bungy from the highest bridge in Africa.

* Chronos: How long did it take?  Less than a minute.

* Kairos: How did you experience it? How does it feel?  Great!  Fantastic! Unbelievable! Heehaaaa!

* Eon: How long will you remember this for?  For the rest of my life.

An important question arises: Do we (should we) not do things and live life for long term impact rather than instant gratification and short term gain (often at the expense of generations to come)?

If so, then let’s think where the long term impact (e.g. “I will remember it forever”) comes from  – from how long it took, or from what you did and experienced?

The answer is obvious: eon comes from kairos, not chronos.  It comes from what you do and experience and not how long it takes.

Yet we tend to focus so much on speeding things up rather than slowing things down.

The “fast productivity” question is: “How long will the meeting take?”.

The “slow productivity” question is” “Should we even have this meeting?”

So many people complain about attending unproductive meetings, yet they do not question the meeting.

Rather than keep on rushing from one meeting to the next, just stop the meeting madness for a moment and ask the Slow Productivity questions: “Why are we meeting?”, “What is the desired outcome?”, “What do you want me to come and to at your meeting?”.

If there are no clear and meaningful answers to these questions – don’t go!

In Africa we have the concept of “African time”.

From Wikipedia: “Africa time” or African time is a colloquial term used to describe a perceived cultural tendency, in some parts of Africa, toward a more relaxed attitude to time. This is sometimes used in a negative sense, about tardiness in appointments, meetings and events. The term is also sometimes used to describe the more leisurely, relaxed and less rigorously scheduled lifestyle found in these countries, especially as opposed to the more hectic, clock-bound pace of daily life in Western countries.  In October 2007, an Ivorian campaign against African time, [had] the slogan… “‘African time’ is killing Africa – let’s fight it.”

But is it?  Or is the clock from the West killing the real spirit of Africa?

Maybe Slow Productivity can embrace practical ways of exploring African time and Slow Time for paradoxically improving productivity?

“Ex Africa semper aliquid novi” – Out of Africa there is always something new.

Maybe the time for African Time is here if we want to have more sanity and improved quality of life and less rush; enjoy more of kairos and be less enslaved to chronos?

Only time will tell.

I have a few associated blogs, but generally all posts will first appear here before being placed in the most appropriate secondary blog.

The other blogs are:

• Slow Productivity
• Slow Time Management

Here you will find musings, thoughts and tips about slowing down life without sacraficing personal and organisational productivity.

I invite you to join me on this journey!