CHAPTER 1

RUN SLOWER

Human beings run faster when we’ve lost our way.

—ROLLO MAY

Take your pick of reasons to run. New and unexpected change happens every week, if not multiple times a day. It could be a new schedule that disrupts a routine that took ages to get right. Or a team that’s behind schedule. Or a time-sensitive opportunity on the horizon. Or not knowing how long you can make your rent payments. Or worrying about your safety. Or your family’s or friends’ safety. Or a melting planet.

Should you walk, sprint, or simply stay put?

Individuals and organizations alike are struggling to answer this question. In the workplace, human resources leaders often argue that when uncertainty looms, it’s necessary to “fire fast.” When you’re not sure where revenue will come from, one of the easiest things to do is reduce your team. After all, salaries are the single-largest line item for most organizations’ budgets.

Yet if we dig into the research, we learn that the opposite is true: since 1980, companies that delay layoffs as long as possible perform better over time than companies that fire fast.¹¹ Why?

It turns out that not only is top talent hard to replace, but layoffs are devastating to the morale and productivity of the team that remains.¹² Organizations that place economic efficiencies over fundamental fairness end up showing their true cards. Values and trustworthiness are hard to recoup.

The lesson here is not that layoffs should never be made or that we should never take swift action. It’s that responding quickly doesn’t necessarily mean responding wisely. In a world in flux, fastest doesn’t always finish first.

THE SUPERPOWER: RUN SLOWER

To thrive in a fast-paced world, slow your own pace.

In an upside-down world that coaxes, cajoles, and coerces you to run ever faster, your key to true success and growth is to do the opposite: learn how to run slower.

The old script says we must run faster to keep up. But a world in flux has different race conditions because the finish line keeps shifting. Whether it’s business demands, home and family priorities, responsibilities to juggle, relationships to nurture, or relentless uncertainty to decipher: the faster we run, and the more we run without resting or reflecting or even paying attention, the worse our results will be over time.

Yet for most people, running faster remains our default. We’re stuck in the old script, and it does not bode well. Especially if we’re running faster alone.

When we learn to run slower, the outcomes are better across the board: wiser decisions, less stress, greater resilience, improved health, a stronger connection with our emotions and intuition, presence, focus, and clarity of purpose. Paradoxically, slowing down actually gives us more time, which leads to less anxiety. Slowing down enhances our productivity in ways that matter and sends burnout to the dustbin. In reality, there are many kinds of growth that can come only with rest.

It took me ages to learn to run slower. For much of my life, I ran as fast as I could: towards goals set by others, away from things I feared, but without giving much thought to why. When my parents died, I wanted to run as fast as I could away from the situation … and yet I didn’t. I stood my ground, and that began my practice of this superpower. It would take many more years to really understand the dynamics of what was unfolding, both internally and in my relationship with the outside world.

Today I can run much slower than I used to, though there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Through trial, error, and deliberate practice, I’ve learned to cherish the power of the pause. I’m more present and less anxious. It’s humbling to admit, but I can see so many things that I simply ran past before. Some things I used to fear have even become sources of joy.

To be clear, running slower does not mean stopping, laziness, stagnation, lack of purpose, or (perhaps the most startling objection) not caring. Nor can it be solved by merely taking a vacation, downloading an app, or seeking a “one-and-done” quick fix (ironically, this will bring a world of misery because what you seek to “fix” is constantly changing). In reality, running slower means plenty of motion and inquiry—at a sustainable pace. It means caring enough to quiet the mind and focus on what really matters.

Of course, there are times when running faster is the right thing to do: swerving to avoid oncoming traffic and signing up for a pandemic vaccination are two things that come to mind. And when we’re in the flow—completely immersed in what we’re doing—we may feel as if we’re more alive, moving and thinking faster than ever.

But on the whole, we are hampered and harmed far more often by our minds racing when we’d rather be calm. We spend our time in constant pursuit of expectations set by others, then wonder where our time (and our hopes, dreams, and desires) went.

We are running chronically ever faster and, in so doing, running right past life itself. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and right here is where to start.

THE OLD SCRIPT AT WARP SPEED

In 2010, researchers at Harvard University revealed that 47 percent of our waking hours are spent thinking about what isn’t going on.¹³ At the time, smartphones were only three years old. We were just beginning to adjust to mobile devices that within a decade would become not only our telephones but our televisions, teachers, bank tellers, transportation providers, food procurers, travel agents, dating services, laundromats, confession booths, and so much more. And yet each of these apps, each button on your smartphone, is another distraction: another opportunity to veer your thoughts elsewhere, away from the magic of life unfolding right in front of you.

Today our on-demand economy has exploded, along with insta-everything expectations, 24/7 lifestyles, and the perception of being “always on.” Today, we take it for granted that Amazon will deliver the next day, if not sooner; we hail a car to pick us up and get frustrated if it takes longer than three minutes; and we outsource tasks in the spirit of “optimizing” our lives by saving five minutes. Never mind that this activity used to bring us joy or in contact with family or friends; it’s far better to preserve that time for being “productive.”

But here’s the rub: we’re miserable from all this running. Millennials are dubbed the Burnout Generation, having internalized the idea—which is reinforced by society, our education system, and often our peers and parents—that our self-worth is directly derived from how much we work. Thus, we should be working all the time.¹⁴

Yet Millennials are the tip of the iceberg. Executives and managers report ever-increasing demands on their time. Leaders are concerned about the well-being of their teams at the same time that they’re under pressure (and rewarded) to prioritize quarterly returns over long-term health. Teachers have more to teach, to more students, with more difficult circumstances and fewer resources year after year. Ministers, caregivers, and others committed to service are totally spent. Parents “optimize” their children’s playtime. The list goes on.

The seed of this problem is planted when we’re young and told that we can, and should, “do it all.” (This is often a nuance of the old script.) On the one hand, this message encourages ambition and achievement: great! At the same time, it leaves you feeling forever as though you’re falling short: you don’t do enough, earn enough, or have enough. (More on this in chapter 5, Know Your “Enough.”) The implicit message is: You’re not enough. So keep going and run faster.

This leads to a kind of internal persecution: not that you’re not capable, but that if you just work harder, you can be better at everything! Paradoxically, this message results in what psychoanalyst Josh Cohen calls “a strange composite of exhaustion and anxiety, a permanent state of dissatisfaction with who we are and what we have. And it leaves us feeling that we are servants rather than masters of … the unending work we put into achieving our so-called best selves.”¹⁵

While each person’s life circumstances are unique, this run-ever-faster reality is pervasive across contemporary culture. Women and men alike aspire to “have it all” and “make it.” You’re running fast to keep up with monthly bills or your neighbors’ display of wealth (real or not), while your neighbors are doing the same thing. The crux is: all this running is unsustainable and making us crazy, yet somehow we can’t seem to stop. But nobody else is going to stop the merry-go-round.

There’s an inextricable link between your ability to slow down and your ability to thrive. Yet this is an increasingly fraught balance to strike because we inhabit a world—a system—that is designed, intentionally or not, to thwart our doing so.

YOU ARE NOT A TO-DO LIST

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Even better, not every place or culture is hell-bent on running faster and always-doing. Have you ever considered not-doing?

Not-doing doesn’t mean merely not working. We often lump activities like meditation and journaling in a sort of “doing nothing” bucket. But these things are very much “doing”: you’re engaged, occupied, thinking. When I say not-doing, I mean really doing nothing. No specific action, no distractions, no goals. And importantly, trusting that the sky will not come crashing down. In fact, it might even be lighter and brighter when you actually stop to appreciate it.

Niks, Anyone?

In the Netherlands, niksen is the socially acceptable and culturally celebrated concept of not-doing.¹⁶ The term literally means “to do nothing,” or to do something specifically without any productive purpose. It’s about “daring to be idle.”¹⁷

The benefits of niksen are profound. Dutch researchers have found that people who regularly “niks” have lower anxiety, improved immune systems, and even an enhanced ability to come up with new ideas and solve problems.¹⁸ The key is to niks regularly (even two minutes a day is a start), without intention and without considering whether it’s productive.

Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.

—WINNIE THE POOH

Wu Wei

Chinese Buddhism has embraced the concept of wu wei (無爲), meaning “lack of exertion” or “action through least action,” since 700 BCE.¹⁹ Wu wei is central to the philosophy of Taoism. Wu wei is different from niksen in that its goals are clearly strategic: it’s a sort of selective passivity that focuses on adjusting ourselves to a given situation rather than frantically seeking to control it. Wu wei can be achieved only when you’ve slowed down enough to truly gauge the situation at hand.

Wu wei is often compared to being “in the zone” or a state of flow. It’s like water, trees, or moss. Not only do these things bend, mold, and adjust themselves to the shape of their surroundings—wind, rock, or soil—but their strength and resilience comes from a slow-growth process. Their power comes from not rushing.

When my parents died, my world simultaneously ground to a halt and tripled in speed. On the one hand, there were so many things to figure out; on the other hand, time stood still. There was nothing to do and everything to do. I was faced with a gaping hole that I could fill with busyness, or with grief.

In retrospect, the most helpful thing I “did” was not-doing. As a young person who wanted nothing more than to graduate and “get going” with life, taking a semester off and an extra year to graduate was hard. Friends graduated while I grieved. My sister, Allison, did even better: she put an indefinite X through her calendar (which ended up lasting almost two years). Allison and I stood in the thick, tragic truth of our situation and re-rooted, each in our own ways given our respective life experiences. We didn’t distract ourselves; we dug into our souls, and that made all the difference.

In the twenty-five-plus years since then, the world has sped up while humanity’s ability to slow down and not-do has stalled. In the face of collective anxiety and doubt worldwide, the best thing we can do is incorporate not-doing into our lives. This can mean pausing, daydreaming, or sitting still. It’s the simple yet profound act of holding yourself in the great space that is the unknown, in order to discover what you’ve been running too fast to become.

Not-doing is when you overcome all things.

—LAO TZU

PRODUCTIVITY: FOR WHAT AND FOR WHOM?

Somehow, a lot of people have landed in a world of exhaustion with a resounding thud. All too often, work is allowed to fill whatever time we give it. Why?

Technology certainly is one culprit, affording insta-always connectivity in our pockets. Meanwhile, contemporary mass-market consumerism and free-market capitalism fuel notions of never having enough, being enough, and—by extension—working hard enough. That’s how consumerism thrives: by making sure we never see ourselves as enough. Yet whether you accept this messaging, indeed if you even see it, is a function of your mindset. Are you questioning this system, or are you too busy hustling on its hamster wheel to notice that you may be running right past life?

My path to running slower has been circuitous and perplexing at times. I have gotten much better at it and recognize it is a lifelong practice. But for a long time, I had more questions than answers.

In the immediate aftermath of my parents’ accident, I was torn in two directions. On the one hand, I wanted to run as fast as I could away from what had happened. On the other hand, I’d been stopped in my tracks and brutally reminded of the fragility of life. Should I run faster into life, because mine could end soon too? Or should I hit the pause button and get clear about exactly what I was running towards, away from, or for?

I opted for the latter, despite some mentors encouraging me to stay the course, go straight to graduate school, or get a job at a consulting firm or a bank. From their perspective, I was credentialed and primed to get my career underway pronto. Ready, set, go!

Yet I also could not stop wondering: What are we racing for? And why?

The old script was all around me. Not only did I feel the pressure to conform personally, I saw my peers rushing to climb the corporate ladder. And I kept second-guessing what my parental sounding board might have said. Would I build something I truly believed in, or was I destined to be a cog in a wheel of someone else’s dream? Would I choose my path, or would it be chosen for me?

At twenty-two, I wanted nothing more than to contribute to the world, especially in ways that would have made my parents proud. But how could I do that without knowing what really mattered to me—and how could I do that without slowing down enough to take stock of the question?

The insights of this story extend far beyond my situation, though here’s how things played out back then: I skipped Wall Street and landed a job researching and guiding hiking and biking trips, beginning in Italy and progressing from there. For almost four years, I traveled with a backpack and without a permanent address, fueled by insatiable curiosity to understand how the rest of the world lives. I got into crazy trouble, learned firsthand about global development, and earned a black belt in cultural diplomacy and self-sufficiency. I earned far less than I would have on Wall Street, but I spent far less too. I lived at the pace of wherever I was, and my entire future changed as a result.

Learning to run slower precisely when society told me to run faster made all the difference. It felt risky to pause, with my irrational-yet-full-blown fear that I might die tomorrow. But it felt far riskier to not even try. Ever since that time and continuing to this day, I regularly ask myself and have asked hundreds of others: If you were on your deathbed tomorrow, what would you wish you’d done? No one has ever answered, Run faster.

Keep in mind, this isn’t just about how this plays out for you or me individually. Collectively, the push to run faster is also destroying the planet. We’re caught in a never-ending cycle of rushing, producing, consuming, and grasping for more. In this quest, we’re burning ourselves out and burning ourselves up.

The faster we produce and consume goods, the more we damage the environment. The more we look for happiness and satisfaction outside ourselves—a new car, a new dress, almost anything that allows us to “buy and display our way out of sadness,” as psychology professor Tim Kasser says—the more likely we are to be depressed.²⁰ We’re taught to consume, consume, consume—and please don’t think about the side effects, thank you very much.

Yet did you know that before marketing ate the word, to consume meant to destroy, as in “consumed by fire,” and to squander, as in “to spend wastefully?”²¹

For today’s leaders, the stakes of running fast are high. At risk is not only one’s well-being, business success, and health of the economy. The survival of earth’s life-support systems and the welfare of future generations are up for grabs as well. Against this backdrop, learning to run slower could solve a lot of other problems too. It’s almost completely at odds with the old script, yet it’s our best shot at staving off collapse.

INSTEAD OF PRODUCTIVITY, OPTIMIZE FOR PRESENCE

There is a better way to rethink our relationship to productivity, sustainability, and a world in flux. And guess what? It’s right in front of us, and it’s part of the new script.

For starters: imagine for a moment that rather than optimizing for productivity, we optimized for presence. (Lest you worry this sounds a bit woo-woo for your business, career, or lifestyle, I assure you it is not.) Allow me to explain.

The old script is obsessed with optimizing for speed, efficiency, and productivity. If you can shave five seconds off your daily routine, or cram one more call into a jam-packed afternoon, that’s victory. The more meetings one can have, the greater one’s sense of worth or self-importance. Keep busy! Success! Progress!

For a long time, even after I’d started writing my new script, I didn’t question this busyness. I went along with it, on extra-busy days even joyfully. But the more I observed, the more undeniable the disconnect was. And when I slowed down to deepen my observation, I was dumbfounded. Hold on: What are we really doing? How in the world have we persuaded one another—and ourselves—that more meetings will somehow make our legacy more important? How have we convinced ourselves that saving five minutes will somehow save our soul?

With the new script, rather than measure meetings, you can gauge presence: your ability to be fully in a moment, experience, or decision. One meeting in which everyone is fully present is worth more than a thousand meetings in which people are distracted.

Ultimately, presence is about attention and response. These things are different yet closely related: you respond to what you’re paying attention to. When you’re running fast, you’re unable to pay full attention. When you’re scattered, you pay attention to the wrong things, which often botches your response. For example, you may respond out of fear rather than love, or contempt rather than compassion, or shut down a conversation that would otherwise ignite your curiosity. In short, you bungle both the question and the answer. When the problem is misunderstood—or worse, missed completely as we race past—the solutions will continue to elude all of us.

And yet, the crux of the solution is simple: slowing down improves your chances of getting the issue and your response right. But that’s not all: you also discover that time is what you perceive it to be. When you slow down, you actually have more time.

So how does one learn to optimize for presence? Fortunately, there are many ways to begin. Some may seem mundane and others quirky. Try whichever ones pique your interest, without over-thinking! I find that the more bizarre a new practice seems, the more off-kilter current habits usually are.

Running slower shifts your focus of attention from outside to inside, with a goal to really listen to what’s going on internally. Not turning away, looking away, or running away. This is presence: how you connect with your true self and learn that so many of the answers you seek are inside … if you can slow down long enough to hear them.

PROTECT THE ASSET

The first time I heard this phrase was in China, listening to a panel of international entrepreneurs who had experienced massive health scares talk about coping when health thwarts your best-laid plans. The punchline was: no matter what your mindset, your body still keeps the score.²⁴ We can’t keep treating conditions like exhaustion, anxiety, and burnout by merely exercising and eating better. We must address the underlying sources of these conditions and meaningfully, consistently slow down.

“Protecting the asset” acknowledges that when your mind is wound up, your body is wound up too, and neither functions well. Grooving a healthier mindset also requires addressing the somatic aspects of one’s relationship with speed. And there is no way for anyone to heal at speed. Quite the contrary: running ever faster ultimately kills. So we must slow down.

The first step in protecting the asset is assessing how your body is holding on to, and embodying, speed. I think of this as a micro health check-in with myself. How am I feeling? Which parts of my body are racing? Which are speaking up, and what are they saying?

This isn’t about judging yourself, and it’s definitely not about trying to change the sensations. This is strictly about paying attention and seeing what comes up. We often associate pain in the neck, shoulders, or lower back with stress. But—no joke—pain and sensations can show up anywhere: in your elbow, foot, or lungs. Heartache is real: not only aching for others but aching for your own well-being.

Pay attention to the discomfort. Sit with it and start to dig deep, to understand what’s behind it. Write about it. Do you try to “work through” distress by ignoring it, or do you give it the time it deserves?

Our bodies communicate with us constantly, yet we often ignore their signals. In a world in flux, your body’s signals may feel even more confusing, yet they are all the more important to understand.

Your most powerful somatic tool is your breath. It’s like a Swiss Army knife, because it does so much. It is also the bridge between your inner and outer worlds, and between body and mind. As you navigate constant change, a committed breathing practice—even a few minutes a day—becomes essential.

Yoga can also help. In the twenty-first century, most people think of yoga as a physical practice. Yet for the first 3,000 years of its existence, it is generally understood that there were no asanas (physical poses). There were only breathing (prana) and meditation while seated. The word yoga itself means “union”: of body and mind, and of the individual with everything else. The goal of yoga is to still the fluctuations of the mind, which practitioners throughout history realized involved bringing the body into alignment. The body is but a vessel through which we calm our minds and connect with others.

More recently, Sensory Awareness Training (SAT) has become popular. SAT helps enhance your awareness of your senses. It includes a range of exercises, from “five senses check-ins” (spending one minute wholly focused on each of your five senses), developing “mental snapshots” (look around, close your eyes, and see how much you remember), and going barefoot.²⁵

Beyond formal constructs, there is a range of simple yet powerful personal exercises and habits that can help you run slower and protect the asset:

RUNNING FROM OURSELVES

Many humans today have a primal fear of slowing down. There’s the perceived fear of social stigma, disbelief, and condescension from others if we get off the fast track. There’s the potential loss of our value to society, for if we aren’t always on, then what are we?

Adding to this conundrum, the more someone takes on, the harder it can be to let go. Broadly speaking, today’s society is one of grasping: for status, wealth, and certainty of the unknown. The bigger one’s pyramid of activities and accomplishments, the bigger one’s sense of self, even if deep down that person is miserable.

The missing link of this conversation is that “getting more done” is not the same as progress, value, or worth. As philosopher Tias Little says, “From a spiritual perspective, moving fast and checking things off of a to-do list is the opposite of progress.”²⁶ According to Little, we’ve become trapped in a “speed vortex” of technology, society, and expectations. We’re caught in “life’s speed lanes” rife with restlessness and frustration. Many people are actually addicted to this speed. But our jam-packed schedules don’t necessarily mean we’re growing; quite possibly, we’re running to escape from ourselves.

This speed gets trapped in the body and affects your ability to think, focus, dream, and create. It keeps you from simply being. It compromises your nerves, connective tissues, and glands. It hampers your physiology and brain chemistry. Your body keeps score while your brain tries to justify a pace that’s working against you.

I had a glimpse of running slower after my parents’ deaths, yet that was one piece of a more complicated puzzle because I was still running from myself. More than a decade later, even though I’d slowed down to grieve, I still lived a “fast” life: working long hours, traveling for business to twentyish different countries each year, and for pleasure to even more, and throwing my all into everything that I could. On the outside, I was doing it all (or at least an awful lot). Yet inside, I was still wracked with anxiety. The more I achieved externally, the more anxious I felt internally. My roots were thin, and I knew that at some point they could splinter, and no amount of external (financial, professional, reputational, etc.) security or reassurances from others could break that fall.

Ultimately, I found my way to cognitive behavioral (CBT) and eye-movement (EMDR) therapies, where I discovered just how deep my anxiety and addiction to speed ran. This discovery was nothing short of life changing. Yet equally revealing is what it led me to observe in many others, in a wide variety of settings and cultures: there is an almost perfect correlation between anxiety and accomplishment.

I have been part of leadership circles in which every single person (representing a range of cultures) feels anxious and unable to properly address it. I regularly see high achievers at their breaking point, who simply keep running because they don’t know what else to do—and are too frightened or too fully on autopilot to stop. Even those who are clear on their personal purpose are often addicted to speed and flirt with burnout regularly. Needless to say, this is no way to live, nor does it bode well for organizations or society to flourish. The imperative to run slower is urgent.

THINK SLOW(ER) AND DELAY JUDGMENT

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

—NAVY SEAL ADAGE

Running slower doesn’t only improve your emotional and physical well-being. It also helps you make better decisions and get better results.

On a day-to-day level, how we think—and how quickly we respond—affects our personal and professional relationships: whether you spark or defuse an argument, make a wise investment, mend a friendship, or win a game. Over time, your ability to gauge timing has a profound impact on how your life unfolds, period.

Research has shown, time and time again, that whenever possible it’s best not to hurry. In other words, the longer you can wait, the better.²⁷ This is not procrastination; this is about your ability to observe, assess, feel, process, take action … and pause, in order to get the best outcome possible.

Running slower is naturally aligned with the concept (and book) Thinking Fast and Slow, popularized by Princeton professor and Nobel Prize–winner Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman reveals how we listen too much to people who think fast and shallow and too little to people who think slow and deep.²⁸ All too often, we frantically get through the day without reserving time to think, learn, and unlearn—yet this is exactly what we need to do in order to think more clearly.

When we’re running fast, we automatically fall into fast-thinking mode: we react quickly and opt for what’s familiar or intuitively comfortable. But as Kahneman shows us, being fast on your feet may make you sound smart, but it doesn’t make you wise.²⁹ Opting for what’s familiar means you miss what’s new, and it does a very poor job preparing you for flux!

Your ability to think slower is directly related to how fast (or slow) you respond, with strikingly similar results. As Frank Partnoy, author of Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, says, “The amount of time we take to reflect on decisions defines who we are … A wise decision requires reflection, and reflection requires a pause.”³⁰

Partnoy has explored delay in the context of everything from Wimbledon tennis to Warren Buffett’s investment portfolio. It turns out that elite athletes’ ability to “first observe, second process, and third act—at the last possible moment—also works well for our personal and business decisions.”³¹ This requires an ability to slow down and to slow down time. For tennis players, this is the split-second pause between seeing and hitting the ball. For fighter pilots, it’s the OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop.³² For the rest of us, it’s the pause between hurting someone’s feelings and offering an authentic apology.

And yet, in today’s fast-paced world, the ability to delay judgment is all the more at risk. As an example, in my role as a startup adviser I have seen numerous entrepreneurs race after venture capital. It doesn’t matter whether their idea is wonderful, wild, or mediocre. They race after funding as if the VC industry (and their personal prestige) were closing shop tomorrow.

And yet, in my experience, entrepreneurs who take money from the first person or firm that offers funding all too often find themselves distraught down the road. Neither the founders nor the investors took the time to fully understand one another’s ethos, expectations, or mission. They let numbers outweigh integrity. They were blinded by the promise of quick returns rather than inspired by the fact that creating value takes time.

This stands in sharp contrast to the concept of Slow Money: “patient capital” that prioritizes investment in long-term, sustainable systems over making a quick buck and fleeing.³³ When change hits, what kind of investment would you prefer?

Running slower helps you think slower and delay judgment, both of which empower you to manage your time—rather than time managing you—and bring your best self to life.

On average, bad things happen fast and good things happen slow.

—STEWART BRAND

FROM FOMO TO JOMO

In 2004, Harvard Business School student Patrick McGinnis coined the terms FOMO and FOBO in a blog post about social theory.³⁴ He posited that HBS students were overwhelmingly plagued by FOMO (fear of missing out) and FOBO (fear of better options), which led to insane social schedules and behavior that contradicted the students’ supposed intelligence.

In the years since then, FOMO has gone mainstream. Today it’s a term you’ll hear fifteen-year-olds and fifty-year-olds use with ease. Society-wide, we’re petrified of missing out.

The thought process goes roughly like this: hyperconnected technologies make it easier for people to share what they’re up to and for others to see, hear, and know about it. As we are exposed to ever more people, places, and activities, our brains react with: look at all that you’re not doing! Even multitaskers are only truly doing one thing, in one place, at one time. FOMO and FOBO make our brains unravel. And when it comes to our pace of life, it’s all exacerbated by a fear of slowing down. If we slow down, then we fall behind, lose out, and the FOMO/FOBO cycle begins again.

McGinnis acknowledges that FOMO is crazy, yet it is real. Originally, he suggested an alternative: fear of doing anything, or FODA (which he characterized as a paralytic state). FODA never really caught on. Instead, it was superseded by a more optimistic phenomenon: JOMO. Fear of missing out becomes joy of missing out.³⁵

We can flip our FOMO and make it positive. Rather than running faster and fretting about everything we’re not doing, we can run slower and rejoice about it instead.

In an interview with Essentialism expert Greg McKeown, McGinnis suggests a three-step process to start unpacking your FOMO.³⁶

I struggled with FOMO and FOBO for years before gradually realizing how rotten both made me feel. In my quest to overcome them, a very simple exercise was among the most powerful: the practice of creating and holding space to notice. I still do this frequently, and it helps every single time.

When we suffer from FOMO, life becomes a Tetris game to fit as much as possible into a given day. Creating and holding space to notice is the antithesis. Here’s how you can start:

When you develop the superpower of running slower, you open space for JOMO to creep in. You may discover whatever envy you once felt melting into compassion, pity, and kindheartedness. Today, I love being in the flow, but I rejoice in unstructured space, whether on my calendar or in my soul. Once you experience JOMO, it’s hard not to want to help others run slower and feel it too.

WHAT ROSES?

Skeptics of running slower, not-doing, and JOMO say, “Ah, I get it. So we should just stop and smell the roses more?!” While I do believe that the world would be a better place if we appreciated the beauty of nature more, this framing sells this superpower’s potential woefully short.

Of course, life isn’t always about being slow. There are times to fly like the wind, to rush into one’s passion, or to burn the midnight oil for one’s dreams. These are moments to cherish, even as they exhaust your reserves.

The far bigger challenge and concern, however, is that we do not—and cannot—have meaningful conversations, develop truly innovative solutions, or fully express or receive love when we are rushing around. As George Butterfield, whose travel company’s tagline is “Slow Down to See the World,” says: “These things aren’t happening because they can’t at 700 miles an hour! Where are the conversations about this frenzy in our schools and organizations, or around the supper table?”³⁷ Not only do we miss the roses entirely (what roses?!) when we’re running too fast, but also future generations continue our traditions of burnout, hustling, and unsustainable business … to the point of collapse.

As we look towards a future in flux, this racing ever faster looks all the more bizarre and all the more dangerous. In a world in flux, we must run slower: not to finish, but to flourish.

RUN SLOWER: REFLECTIONS

Notice how your thinking may have evolved in the course of reading this chapter. Integrate these insights into your new script.