I have a water flosser. I’ve used one for many years and I think I’m on my third unit! They’re wonderful contraptions that basically blast water wherever you point the pointy bit. If you want it to do the job for which it was designed, you point it at your teeth. Even better, at the gaps between them. I’ll not dwell on it too much because it’s actually a bit yucky!
Why on earth do I tell you this? Well, bear with me: All of them have had three different power settings: low, medium and high. And here’s the thing: every single one of them I have only ever used on high. It made me wonder, why do they make them with low and medium speeds if I only ever use high?
Be like the water flosser
We, like the water flosser, have been designed to go about life at various different speeds. Whether it be different times of the day, different days of the week, different times of the month or different months of the year. There are times when we should be operating at a slower speed. These days so many of us try to operate the same way I operate a water flosser. Its either off or its on full!
A Sensible Book
Cal Newport discusses, among other good ideas, how working at different speeds is important to the human psyche in his new book “Slow Productivity”.* Unlike my water flosser, “working with unceasing intensity is artificial and unsustainable” (p.124).* Sometimes it is more necessary to return to “the more varied effort levels for which humans are wired” (p.124)*.
Seasons
Of particular interest to me just recently has been how energy levels change over the period of a year. During the short days and long nights of Winter, our ancestral friends would have inevitably done things very differently to what they did in the longer days and shorter nights of Summer. Maybe we would do well to try and replicate some of that change of pace in our modern lives? Even if it only means that we cut ourselves some slack when we do not have the same energy in the middle of Winter that we may have in the middle of Spring.
In the meantime I will continue to use my water flosser on full!
If you’re struggling to vary the pace and want greater confidence to be able to put yourself first contact me to find out how Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help
* Newport, Cal (2024) Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout