UNLEASH THE POWER OF SLOW IN YOUR OFFICE

In The Power of Slow Carl Honore says we have become speed junkies who are more concerned with getting tasks done fast than with doing them well or even enjoying them. Honore is a well known journalist who currently lives in England where, he says, they have “speed yoga” and “drive through funerals.” He recommends that we all get in touch with our “inner tortoise” because sometimes slowing down is the only way to get the most out of an activity.

There is no doubt we lawyers, like other busy professionals, try to cram as much activity as humanly possible into each day and that in the process we not only wear ourselves out but we lose touch with ourselves, the people around us and our environment. As we rush through each task with a furrowed brow and ferocious intensity we are holding our breath and we are emotionally tight. We don’t even protect ourselves from interruptions. Instead we take calls, surf the Web, read emails and respond to emails while performing other work activities. We have been seduced into an orgy of multi-tasking by the slick, attractive IT gadgets that seem to flow constantly from the IT wizards of our time. These gadgets look cool and we think we have to have them.

Is multitasking really as time efficient, as cost-effective and as useful as the makers of these gadgets suggest? The evidence is dramatically in the negative. In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ of 10 points which is double that found in marijuana smokers. In 2007 Microsoft did a study in which it found that every time one of its employees was interrupted by an email or instant message it took him 15 minutes to recover his concentration and get back to serious work.

Cognitive scientists David E. Meyers, Director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan says that multitasking slows you down and increases the chances you will make mistakes. That’s because disruptions and interruptions screw up our brain’s ability to process information.

According to Torkel Klingberg, M.D., Ph.D., author of The Overflowing Brain, this shouldn’t be surprising. That’s because our brains were designed 40,000 years ago when our prehistoric ancestors lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers performing much simpler tasks than we perform. Working memory, a frontal lobe function, is akin to our mental chalkboard, the place where we hold information in mind while making evaluations, plans or choices. The capacity of human working memory correlates with the demands upon it—the demands related to living in a social group, using language to learn what you need to know, etc.

When the modern human brain developed, Cro-Magnon people were making hunting tools out of bone and painting animals on cave walls using pigments from crushed berries. They lived in small social groups varying from 15 to 150. They did not need a huge working memory capacity (equivalent to DSL or cable) to get the job done. The sheer amount of information at their disposal was minuscule related to our time. Their limitation to seven units of information at a time suited them fine. This limitation of working memory creates a bottleneck in the brain when we try to process too many bits of information at once.

Studies show that talking on a cell phone (be it hands-on or hands-free) seriously impairs your ability to concentrate and drive safely. Do you think you can write a quality brief or motion while frequently breaking your train of thought to take calls, instant messages or emails? It’s crucial to manage IT gadgets, and use them sparingly at intervals, rather than let them take center stage in your workspace and your work life. Lawyers in 2010 could learn a lot from Lord Chesterfield. In a letter to one of his sons in the 1740s Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” We would all be better off to set aside a time to check emails and instant messages, say once every two hours, than to multi-task.

If you cut back on multi-tasking you will reduce your task stress, increase your task accuracy and increase the pleasure you gain from work. In The Pleasure Center Morten Kringelbach said one of the most profound pleasures a person can experience is the state of “fluid absorption” in which he is so fully engaged in an activity (be it work, meditation, prayer, play, the making of art or making love) that he loses all sense of self and of time. It's actually possible to do this in a busy law office by having your secretary protect you from calls and visitors during a prearranged time slot. Why deprive oneself of this blissful state by ceaselessly working in a harried, frenetic way?

By boosting your mental focus on one thing using the power of slow will greatly benefit you when it comes to writing a brief, a motion or an opposition to your opponent's motion. It will also improve your ability as a listener and enhance your conversations with others, both one-on-one and in meetings.

Carl Honore offers some tips to help us slow down. He says always do a gear check before you start a project. By that he means ask yourself what is the ideal mental speed to get the job done well. While some tasks should be done quickly (like picking up the phone when the judge calls from chambers) some are best done slowly. If the best way to do a task is slowly, then put yourself in the right frame of mind to do it slowly. You can do this by sitting quietly and taking some deep breaths to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Just as there are trigger words to make you speed up like a crazed hamster spinning his wheel ("get moving"), there are words or phrases which can help each person slow down. Some people tell themselves "Relax" or "Be here now." I have begun to use the phrase "Slow down, savor this moment." Experiment and see which words or phrases work best for you.

Honore also suggests we do speed audits which means that once we have started an activity we take a moment to ask ourselves if we are staying on track or if we have unconsciously sped up.

If the idea of slowing down seems attractive but impossible trying reading Thoreau’s Thoughts From Walden Pond or hike with a friend in the woods at a slow pace while really noticing the rocks, moss, streams, trees, plants and birds. You can learn to draw, which requires long periods of careful, silent observation. You can learn to meditate or (if you already have a meditation practice) try a week long meditation retreat done mainly in silence. You can also try walking meditation in which you take each step very slowly and mindfully while really noticing the contact of your feet with the ground and the feel of your feet sinking into the earth, the carpet or whatever surface you're walking upon. Check out Walking Meditation by Nguyen Anh-Huong and Thich Nhat Hanh, a package of a book, DVD and CD published by www.soundstrue.com

Good luck finding your inner tortoise and slowing down. It’s worth your while. Your will have much fewer activations of your sympathetic (fight-flight) nervous system, lower stress, improved health and improved concentration. People will enjoy being around you more, since you'll be less wired, less distracted, more focused and more present. How can you lose?