The Unexpected Benefits of Slowing Down and Accomplishing Less

In our society, there is a huge push to be productive.  There are books, websites and experts who want to train you on how to accomplish even more during your waking hours.  The problem is that doing more will not make you more successful.  Nor will it make you happier.  Rather, if you want to succeed in life, you need to accomplish less.

I know that statement sounds counter-intuitive.  After all, shouldn’t the folks who accomplish more be the most successful?  You’d think that would be the case.  But I’ve observed over the years that doing more doesn’t make you more successful.  It only makes you more miserable.

That’s because you shouldn’t be speeding through life, neurotically trying to fit in as many tasks as possible into your day.  If you do that, you’ll simply end up doing a lot of things poorly.  And you’ll be exhausted and miserable in the process.

Rather, the secret to life is this: To really enjoy life and to do all things well, do fewer things and do them slowly. 

Below are six ways that you can benefit from accomplishing less and doing things slowly.  Adopt this approach to life, and see how much happier and more successful you can become!

Do Less to Improve Your Quality of Work

A month ago, I ordered some ceramic baking dishes from one of the big online retailers.  Now, ceramics are strong, but they are also breakable.  Significantly, this particular retailer is known for demanding that their employees to be “productive.”  So, they track how many packages their employees pack each hour. 

Well, you can guess what happened.  The poor soul who packed my ceramic bakeware was under a lot of pressure to pack a silly number of packages per hour.  So, in their rush, he (or she) understandably packed my ceramic baking dishes in a box with no packing materials.  As you can imagine, while in transit, the dishes bashed around inside the box and arrived at my doorstep in several broken pieces.

With all due respect to this highly successful online retailer, productivity is not leading them to have excellent results.  It’s leading them to send me broken bakeware.

What’s the lesson here?  Doing things quickly is always a bad idea.  It will lead you to do a crummy job.  And then won’t be able to take pride in your work, because your work won’t be exceptional.  It will be merely average or subpar.

If you want to feel good about yourself and all that you do, choose to do fewer things well.  And I’m not just referring to your job.  If you really want to be happy with yourself, do everything slowly and with care.

For example, I do everything, from my work to my laundry to cooking, with extreme care.  I don’t do things quickly.  In fact, if you ask my family, they’ll tell you that I have two rules: Don’t Bother Me and Don’t Rush Me.  That may sound harsh, but I like to do a good job.  So, I’m not interested in rushing around, doing a ton of things.  I just want to do a couple of things well each day.

The good news is that if you make the choice to accomplish less, you’ll reap the rewards of doing a great job in the limited number of things that you do!  And at the end of the day, you’ll feel great about yourself due to a job well done.

Do Less and Feel Less Stress

In decorating, the common view is that every room needs some “white space.”  Otherwise, a room can feel cluttered and overwhelming.  The same holds true for life.  We all need “white space” in life.  We need periods of time each day and each week when we can just do nothing. Otherwise, life can become very stressful.

There were several years when my life had no “white space.”  I had absolutely no down time.  My weekdays were spent working at a job, doing housework and meeting the needs of other people.  Then my weekends were burdened with endless, draining social activities. 

Let me be clear: All this activity did not make my life exciting.  Instead, I was miserable and stressed out.  What I desperately needed was “white space.”  I needed To Do Less.  I needed down time every day, and I needed to devote my weekends to being still, relaxing and doing those things that nourished me.

So, at a certain point, I decided to take my life back.  I decided to stop exhausting myself for the benefit of others, and to use my time in ways that I found rewarding.  Nowadays, I treat my personal time as what it truly is – sacred.  When I’m not working, I use my free time to read, sit and think.  I set aside portions of each day for “me” time, and my weekends are spent only doing those activities that I enjoy.

As a result, I no longer feel that overwhelming stress that I used to feel.  Instead, I look forward to my weekdays and my weekends.  And that’s because I’ve made a commitment To Do Less, and to simply Enjoy My Life.

Slow Down to Make Better Decisions

So often in life, we make decisions by reacting to situations.  Now, that’s fine if another car unexpectedly pulls in front of you on the highway.  Then yes, by all means react by braking your car. 

But most situations in life don’t require such immediate responses.  Instead, we typically have time to think before we act.  The problem is that we don’t always slow down to take advantage of that time.

Slowing down is especially important with big life decisions.  Getting married, choosing a career and moving to a new place are all decisions that should be taken slowly.  Why?  Well, if you make those kinds of choices in haste, you’ll miss the obvious red flags.

Anyone who has ever gotten divorced will tell you that there were plenty of red flags before they got married, alerting them to the fact that the marriage was going to be a disaster.  The same holds true for when we accept jobs that aren’t a right fit, or when we move to a new place which doesn’t suit us.  There are always red flags in life saying, “Stop!  You are about to make a profoundly bad decision!”  The reason that we don’t heed them is that we are rushing through life, not taking our time to think critically about our next steps.

Realize that life simply isn’t a race.  I recently saw an article that listed the things that you need to have accomplished by 30.  What idiocy!  There are no deadlines for life accomplishments.  So, take life slowly.  Make careful decisions and go at an easy pace.  If you do so, you’ll make far wiser decisions and have a much happier life.

Do Less and Slow Down to Have Better Relationships

Very often in life, we wonder why some of our relationships aren’t working.  Now, sometimes our relationships aren’t working due to incompatibility.  That’s a tough pill to swallow. But the reality is that you aren’t going to necessarily get along beautifully with every person in your life. 

However, sometimes our relationships aren’t working because we aren’t putting in the necessary time.  That’s because great relationships are cultivated by regular, in-person communication. 

So, if you want to improve a particular relationship, try sitting with the other person and having a face-to-face conversation.  A long conversation.  Minimum one hour.  I promise you that there is no substitute for that kind of communication. 

Unfortunately, in our technology obsessed world, we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that Zoom and FaceTime are a substitute for face-to-face communication.  We think that texting and emailing likewise will allow us to have great relationships.  They don’t.  If we want to have great relationships, we have to slow down and make time for in-person interactions with those we care about.

For example, slowing down and doing less always has been my recipe for parenting.  When raising my daughter, my focus was always on just chatting.  We chatted in the car, at Barnes & Noble and at Starbucks.  To be honest, during her younger years, we simply did a lot of “hanging out.”  In fact, I’ve always thought of being a parent as having a long conversation with a young person.  And that approach to parenting paid off. My daughter now is an incredibly successful young adult, and we have a terrific relationship.

The challenge is that you can’t have those relaxed conversations if you are running from one acitivity to the next.  Marriages, friendships, and family relationships all need in-person, focused time to just be together and enjoy each other’s company.

So, if your relationships aren’t what you think they should be, slow down.  Stop rushing through your time with others. Instead, make the time to spend relaxed, quiet time with the people you love.

If you are seeking to have a happier, more successful life, consider slowing down.  Don’t worry about accomplishing so much in any given 24-hour period.  Instead, do less, and see how much better your life becomes. (To read about 5 rules for creating a happy life, click here.)