In Praise of Slowness

Author: Carl Honore
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061907316
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold, and American adults currently devote on average a mere half hour per week to making love. Living on the edge of exhaustion, we are constantly reminded by our bodies and minds that the pace of life is spinning out of control. In Praise of Slowness traces the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time and tackles the consequences of living in this accelerated culture of our own creation. Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Realizing the price we pay for unrelenting speed, people all over the world are reclaiming their time and slowing down the pace -- and living happier, healthier, and more productive lives as a result. A Slow revolution is taking place. Here you will find no Luddite calls to overthrow technology and seek a preindustrial utopia. This is a modern revolution, championed by cell-phone using, e-mailing lovers of sanity. The Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word -- balance. People are discovering energy and efficiency where they may have been least expected -- in slowing down. In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honoré details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream -- in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. Defining a movement that is here to stay, this spirited manifesto will make you completely rethink your relationship with time.

The Slow Fix

Author: Carl Honore
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062220810
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
In The Slow Fix, bestselling author Carl Honoré delivers an exhilarating model for effective problem-solving, and provides brilliant insights on how you can solve problems, work smarter, and live better. Honoré decodes how we approach problems and paves the way to better decision-making and generating long-term solutions to life’s inevitable challenges. Engaging and thought-provoking, The Slow Fix revolutionizes the way we live, work, consume, and think, ultimately increasing our wins and enhancing personal success. With The Slow Fix, Honoré details a new paradigm for efficient, sustainable problem solving, teaching us how to use time to build expertise, take advantage of teamwork, find the right messenger to deliver our message, and much more.

The Discovery of Slowness

Author: Sten Nadolny
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101658096
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
In The Discovery of Slowness, German novelist Sten Nadolny recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). The reader follows Franklin's development from awkward schoolboy and ridiculed teenager to expedition leader, governor of Tasmania, and icon of adventure. Everyone with whom he came into contact sensed that he was a rare man, one who was “out of his time” and who moved to a different, grander beat. That beat eventually led Franklin to sail once more—on his final, fateful voyage—into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. The Discovery of Slowness is both a riveting account of a remarkable and varied life, and a profound and thought-provoking meditation on time.

Bolder

Author: Carl Honoré
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0735273359
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Carl Honoré captured the zeitgeist with his international bestseller, In Praise of Slow. Now he tackles another rising global movement: our revolutionary new approach to a human inevitability--ageing. A revolution in how we age is on its way. Yes, ageing is inevitable: one year from now we will all be a year older; that will never change. What can and will change is how we age--and how we can all take a much bolder approach to doing it with vigour and joy. The time has come to cast off prejudices and to blur the lines of what is possible and permissible at every stage of life. In other words: we need to learn to re-imagine our approach to later life. Emboldening ourselves in older age demands big structural changes. For a start, we will have to tear up the old script that locks us into devoting the early part of our life to education, the middle chunk to working and raising kids, and whatever is left over at the end to leisure. In an age-inappropriate world, these silos will dissolve. We'll embrace the idea that we can carry on learning from start to finish; that we can work less and devote more time to family, leisure, and giving back to our communities in our middle years; and that we can remain active and engaged in our later years. Carl Honoré has travelled the globe speaking to influential figures who are bucking preconceived notions of age, whether at work or in their personal lives. He looks at the cultural, medical, and technological developments that are opening new possibilities for us all. Bolder is a radical re-think of our approach to everything from education, healthcare and work, to design, relationships and politics. An essential and inspiring read for everyone interested in our collective future.

Under Pressure

Author: Carl Honore
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061881953
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
"Why do grown-ups have to take over everything?" This innocent question from acclaimed journalist and international bestselling author Carl Honoré’s son sparked a two-year investigation into how our culture of speed, efficiency, and success at all costs is damaging both parents and children. When the impulse to give children the best of everything runs rampant, parents, schools, communities, and corporations unwittingly combine forces to create over-scheduled, over-stimulated, and overindulged kids. The mere mention of potty-training, ballet classes, preschool, ADD, or overeating is enough to spark a heated debate about the right way to raise our children. The problem is that despite the best intentions of all involved, the pressure to manage every detail of our children’s lives from in utero through college is overwhelming. Delivering much more than a wake-up call, international bestselling author Carl Honoré interviews experts in Europe, North America, and the Far East, talks to families around the world and sifts through the latest scientific research. Not only do we see the real dangers of micromanaging children, but Honoré also shows us an emerging new movement inspiring many to slow down and find the natural balance between too little and too much. Blending the finest reportage, intellectual inquiry, and extraordinary true stories, Under Pressure is the first book to challenge the status quo by mapping out an alternative to the culture of hyperparenting that is presently pushing children and their parents to the brink.

In Praise of Wasting Time

Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154370
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 106

Book Description
In this timely and essential book that offers a fresh take on the qualms of modern day life, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks. We are all worried about wasting time. Especially in the West, we have created a frenzied lifestyle in which the twenty-four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to ten minute units of efficiency. We take our iPhones and laptops with us on vacation. We check email at restaurants or our brokerage accounts while walking in the park. When the school day ends, our children are overloaded with “extras.” Our university curricula are so crammed our young people don’t have time to reflect on the material they are supposed to be learning. Yet in the face of our time-driven existence, a great deal of evidence suggests there is great value in “wasting time,” of letting the mind lie fallow for some periods, of letting minutes and even hours go by without scheduled activities or intended tasks. Gustav Mahler routinely took three or four-hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he visited his country house. In his 1949 autobiography, Albert Einstein described how his thinking involved letting his mind roam over many possibilities and making connections between concepts that were previously unconnected. With In Praise of Wasting Time, Professor Alan Lightman documents the rush and heave of the modern world, suggests the technological and cultural origins of our time-driven lives, and examines the many values of “wasting time”—for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, and for finding and solidifying the inner self. Break free from the idea that we must not waste a single second, and discover how sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.

30 Days To Slow

Author: Carl Honoré
Publisher: Carl Honore
ISBN: 9781838257491
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
A practical, step-by-step guide to eliminate the rushing, distraction and busyness in your life. Become calmer, healthier, happier, more focused, more efficient, more productive, more creative, more present. Unleash a better you at work, at home and everywhere in between. This workbook is the perfect companion to the global bestseller In Praise of Slow (In Praise of Slowness in the USA). Carl Honoré is the voice of the Slow Movement and the world's leading expert on slowing down in a fast world. While researching In Praise of Slow, he got slapped with a speeding ticket ....

Slow

Author: Brooke McAlary
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 149266555X
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Free Yourself from a Frantic Life and Embrace the Joy of Slow Living What is slow living? It's a way to find happiness by stepping away from the never-ending demands to constantly succeed and acquire more and more. It's easy to get stuck in the carousel of frantically wanting, buying, and upgrading the things in your life. The philosophy of simple living is about finding the freedom to be less perfect and taking time to enjoy the pure joys of life: a walk in the forest, sharing laughter with family, a personal moment of gratitude. Reconnecting with the living world can help you integrate moments of peace, joy, and mindfulness into an otherwise rapid life. Simple living: After being diagnosed with post-natal depression, Brooke McAlary learned about the power of minimalism and found that the key to happiness was a simpler, more fulfilling existence. She put the brakes on her stressful path and reorganized her life to live outside the status-quo, emphasizing depth, connection, and meaningful experiences. Brooke shares the story of her journey alongside practical advice for simplifying in ways that work for your life. In Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World, you'll find: Guidance for forming your own slow life Ways to declutter and de-own Tips to replace messiness with mindfulness Paths forward to answer the question "Where to now?" Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World is an excellent addition to your library if you have read Soulful Simplicity, The Art of Frugal Hedonism, The Year of Less, or Destination Simple.

Slow Professor

Author: Maggie Berg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442645563
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 126

Book Description
In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

Pity the Reader

Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795352832
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
“A rich, generous book about writing and reading and Kurt Vonnegut as writer, teacher, and friend . . . Every page brings pleasure and insight.”—Gail Godwin, New York Times bestselling author Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he’s given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition. His former student, Suzanne McConnell, has outfitted us for the journey, and in these 37 chapters covers the waterfront of how one American writer brought himself to the pinnacle of the writing art, and we can all benefit as a result. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the few grandmasters of American literature, whose novels continue to influence new generations about the ways in which our imaginations can help us to live. Few aspects of his contribution have not been plumbed—fourteen novels, collections of his speeches, his essays, his letters, his plays—so this fresh view of him is a bonanza for writers and readers and Vonnegut fans everywhere. “Part homage, part memoir, and a 100% guide to making art with words, Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style is a simply mesmerizing book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!”—Andre Dubus III, #1 New York Times bestselling author “The blend of memory, fact, keen observation, spellbinding descriptiveness and zany characters that populated Vonnegut’s work is on full display here.”—James McBride, National Book Award-winning author