Can we slow down?
We live in a world that is increasingly becoming faster and faster. This is evidenced in many areas of life ranging from business to family and social events. Bill Gates has been a proponent of faster business in his book, Business at the Speed of Thought. Many other authors have been proponents of ideas like out-smarting and out-thinking. Basically, there have been many voices calling for faster processes, faster thinking, faster living and faster everything.
This quest for faster and faster has in many ways ended up hurting society. Stress levels have increased and a lot of damage has been done to people, organizations and institutions in society. We have a saying back home that ”we operate on African time”. In America people say that time is money. These two sayings depict two different paradigms on the idea of time. There are advantages and disadvantages to both paradigms but I believe there is a lot that the West can learn from “African time” in terms of time management and slowing down the pace of life. I am in the process of writing down some thoughts, but of course I’m working on “African time”.
