In this era of speed, we need to slow down.

It’s certainly not new, this idea of doing things faster.  Working in IT as I do it has been a theme all along.  Be it the speed of the CPUs or storage retrieval at the lower levels, or how fast a program compiles at a higher level.  (Remember when we used to write programs?)  The faster something can be done the better. 

 

This might be true for the hardware and software of computers, but it isn’t necessarily true for us humans.  Do you really want to do everything faster?  

 

One thing I think needs to be done slower is writing emails and other types of written communication (like this blog post).  To many times I find myself writing an email that is full of mistakes.  Sure, the email system can check spelling, but when I spell the word correctly and it’s the wrong word, it doesn’t always know that. And there are some systems that don’t have the ability to check spelling and grammar as well as others. 

 

Which brings up another point of how lazy we are getting about our writing.  I’m certainly guilty of this.  I’ve never been very good at spelling and I now find myself relying on my computer to fix my rather poor spelling.  I still have my Websters Dictionary (1972) but I can’t recall the last time I looked up a word in it.  

 

(A note on wrong words, in the above I had “reliving” instead of “relying”.  The word was spelled correctly but clearly not the correct one.) 

 

There are plenty of other times we need to slow down.  Many revolve around communication.  
When speaking to each other, taking a moment to think about what to say can go a long way to communicate not only what you want to say but also how you want to say it.  And there are times when not saying anything might really be the best choice of all.  

 

Of course, this applies to actions as well.  How many times have you done something that you immediately regret?  Maybe not huge but none the less, you think to yourself “why did I just do that!?” 

 

 

Life is in the pause. 

 

 

Pause for a moment or two to consider what you have written or are about to say or do.  
Once something is written or said or done, it will live forever.