This book was a recommendation from my cousin Sean. I took it for a standard "slow down" book in the spirit of How To Do Nothing or Rest Is Resistance (both of which I love), and did not realize until after I opened it that it is a deeply Christian book. This works fine, since I'm a Christian, and books written by pastors are notoriously quick to read.

I did in fact end up reading this book in one day. After a big pep talk about the over-hurried nature of our society, the author breaks down his advice about eliminating hurry into four categories:

  1. Silence (spend time not doing anything, silently, just thinking)
  2. Sabbath (set aside time, in advance, every week, to not do productive work)
  3. Simplicity (identify things in your life where you're putting in too much effort for the joy you get, and stop doing those things)
  4. Slowing (question the idea that the most efficient solution is always the best)

The author tries to be pretty non-prescriptive with it; the parentheticals here are my take aways, not his actual advice. Sabbath and Simplicity, while not well practiced, definitely seem non-controversial and, in fact, important. But it was "Silence" and "Slowing" that felt like newer territory.

The importance of "Silence" for me first started to become clear to me when I realized that I had basically eliminated silence from my life after Apple introduced Automatic Device Switching for AirPods a few years ago. With this feature, I can stream audio into my ears all day by starting with a podcast on my phone when I wake up, switching to music when I sit down at my computer, switching to an audiobook when I go for a run with my Apple Watch, and then sitting down to watch TV on my iPad before dinner. With all that stimulation, it a) feels like the day slips by me very quickly, without any room to breathe, and b) prevents me from doing any of the deep thinking about myself and about the world that can only come from silence. "Silence", here can be metaphorical, perhaps for "lack of distraction"; it doesn't necessarily need to be AirPods.

"Slowing" is a fun one in as much as, for so many elements of our life, the descriptor "most efficient" has become synonymous with "best". But what is lost when we do things in the most efficient way? One example: Liz and I took a trip to South Bend this weekend to go to a Notre Dame game. Instead of taking the highway like we normally do, we took the slower state road, adding about an hour to our drive. It was mostly a one-lane road, so everyone was at the mercy of the slowest driver. We were on vacation either way, so what was the rush? We got to see the leaves changing color, spend more time together, and got to drive through some very quaint Indiana towns that we never would've had reason to come through, otherwise.

This book was a fun one, and is still thought provoking a few months later. The concepts presented are general enough that they can be fun to play with, regardless of your situation, but the explanations are rich enough that it doesn't seem vague and hand-waving. If you're interested in feeling less hurried, this is a good book for you. I will say: if the Christian God is not part of how you see the world, the book will probably feel much less relevant.