Slow Travel debate (Part 2)

In 2011, the Southbank Centre in London hosted a panel discussion on the art of Slow Travel. The panellists were:

1. Ed Gillespie, head of a sustainability consultancy and one-time Slow Traveller columnist in the Observer.

2. Harry Eyres, a poet and author of the Slow Life column in the Financial Times.

I was the moderator.

This video is broken into three parts. This is Part 2.

Slow travel debate (Part 1)

In 2011, the Southbank Centre in London hosted a panel discussion on the art of Slow Travel. The panellists were:

1. Ed Gillespie, head of a sustainability consultancy and one-time Slow Traveller columnist in the Observer.

2. Harry Eyres, a poet and author of the Slow Life column in the Financial Times.

I was the moderator.

This video is broken into three parts. This is Part 1.

Unplugged

Just back from nine glorious days in a cottage in a forest by the sea in Sweden. Swimming in the Baltic, soccer on the sandy beach, eating under the stars. It was heaven.

A big part of the charm was that we never once looked at a screen of any size: no email, no Internet, no phones, no TV.

Which made me wonder: is unplugging now the ultimate luxury?

Of course, being online can be wonderful. We are hardwired to be curious and to connect and communicate. The problem is that in a world of limitless information and constant access to other people, we often don’t know when to stop.

Being “always on” is exhausting and superficial. It erodes our producitivity. It locks us into what one Microsoft research called a state of “continuous partial attention.”

That’s why a backlash is gathering steam.

Consider the rise of the Slow Technology movement.

Or the response to news that more airlines are planning to allow travelers to use mobile phones and surf the Internet during flights.

You would expect a roar of applause from passengers desperate to stay connected in the air.  But the opposite is true. A recent survey of business travelers – the Crackberry demographic – found that 91.2% were against wiring up flights for phone and Internet use.

Why? Because the plane is now the final frontier, the last place on earth where you can completely disconnect, where you can forget about your inbox and voicemail. A place to doze, doodle and daydream. A place where your time is truly your own.

One frequent flyer I know puts it this way: “I hate flying but I look forward to flights now because it’s the only time when no one can bother or interrupt me. These days I do some of my best thinking on planes.”

And of course there is another compelling reason to resist the wiring up of flights: Can you imagine anything worse than being woken by someone in the next seat shouting ”I’m on an airplane!” into a handset?

For more thoughts on this, check out my piece in the current issue of Vodafone Receiver.

Slow Sunday

Remember when we used to have a day of rest? In Christian countries, it was Sunday. Work stopped, stores closed, the sound and fury of the city subsided.

But that’s all a distant memory now. Sunday has become just like any other day of the week: we work, shop, surf the Net, sit fuming in traffic jams.

This is folly. Most cultures have some kind of Sabbath tradition for one simple reason: we all need a break.

It’s probably too late to turn back the clock to make Sunday an official day of rest. The genie is out of the bottle and the world is too complex and multicultural to accept an enforced Sabbath.

But we can still set aside a day to relax, reflect and spend time with the people that are important to us.

One way to do that is to take part in the Slow Sunday Campaign. It is the brainchild of Resurgence, a wonderful British magazine that espouses a Slow view of the world. One Sunday a month, its readers are invited “to take part in simple actions that symbolize a rejection of commercialism, a passion for the planet and a desire for change.”

One Sunday it was baking bread. Last time it was planting something.

I love this idea. We’re all so busy and frenetic that we almost need a campaign to remind us that it’s okay to ease off one day a week.

My own Sundays are already pretty slow. In the morning I play soccer with my son, his friends and few other dads. Then we usually cook, eat a leisurely lunch and maybe go for a walk.

Come to think of it, our Saturdays are kinda slow, too.

If the Resurgence campaign catches fire, the next step might be to start crusading for Slow Weekends…

Slow Travel debate (Part 3)

In 2011, the Southbank Centre in London hosted a panel discussion on the art of Slow Travel. The panellists were:

1. Ed Gillespie, head of a sustainability consultancy and one-time Slow Traveller columnist in the Observer.

2. Harry Eyres, a poet and author of the Slow Life column in the Financial Times.

I was the moderator.

This video is broken into three parts. This is Part 3.

Summer’s out…

Another thought to add to my May 24th post about the demise of the summer vacation. One of the rites of passage for teenagers used to be working a summer job – usually something menial like washing cars or bagging groceries. I waited tables, worked on a construction crew, ran a photocopying shop and mowed lawns. None was ever going to be a career choice but I had fun and learned a lot. Today, though, teenagers are turning their back on the dead-end summer job in record numbers. Manydon’t want to work – and don’t have to because their parents are happy to keep paying their credit card bills. Others prefer to burnish their résumés by attending summer school and college-prep programs or by doing volunteer work. Some are setting up their own businesses. All of these are worthy pursuits, but maybe something is getting lost along the way, especially for teenagers from affluent families. Though it may not glitter on a résumé, a menial job can teach some important lessons – that not everyone is as rich as you,that life can be tough and unpleasant, thatsometimes you have to keep on working when you’d rather stop. In arecent article inUSA Today,leading CEOs explained that doing menial summer jobs in their teens gave them a solid grounding for later success. As parents we want to give our children the best of everything, which tends not to include flipping burgersat McDonald’s or cleaning out the toilets at the mall. But maybe it should. After all, nothing punctures that sense of entitlement, that feeling that only the best is good enough, more than getting bossed around at a dead-end job. Instead ofgetting our kids accustomed to the best of everything, perhaps we should be helping them to learn a much more useful skill: how to make the best of what they’ve got. I hear Burger King is now taking applications for the summer…