Cover of book Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World

Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World

by: Brooke McAlary

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20 Highlights | 19 Notes
  • Location: xiv link
    Ah, isn't that what we all crave? What discipline! What focus! To be able to tune out our surroundings, to access one'sfull capabilities at any time, in any place, despite every difficulty? How wonderful that would be! What we'd be able to accomplish! How much happier we would be!
  • Location: 31 link
    “If you wish to improve,” Epictetus once said, “be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.”
    linkNote: #eq, Epictetus
  • Location: 33 link
    The point is, it's very difficult to think or act clearly (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information.
    linkNote: And still reading this book...
  • Location: 34 link

    Knowing what not to think about. What to ignore and not to do. It's your most first and most important job.

    Thich Nhat Hanh:
    Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then we will have the strength to allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of frustration.

    linkNote: #eq, Thich Nhat Hanh
  • Location: 35 link
    The way you feel when you awake early in the morning and your mind is fresh and as yet unsoiled by the noise of the outside world — that's space worth protecting. So too is the zone you lock into when you're really working well. Don't let intrusions bounce you out of it. Put up barriers. Put up the proper chuting to direct what's urgent and unimportant to the right people.
    linkNote: Case for boundaries to protect your deep-work time and sky-blue time.
  • Location: 55 link

    Michel Foucalt talked of the ancient genre of hupomnemata (notes to oneself). He called the journal a “weapon for spiritual combat,” a way to practice philosophy and purge the mind of agitation and foolishness and to overcome difficulty. To silence the barking dogs in your head. To prepare for the day ahead. To reflect on the day that has passed. Take note of insights you've heard. Take the time to feel wisdom flow through your fingertips and onto the page.

    This is what the best journals look like. They aren't for the reader. They are for the writer. To slow the mind down. To wage peace with oneself.

    linkNote: Michel Foucalt, why journal
  • Location: 57 link

    It's spiritual windshield wipers, as the writer Julia Cameron once put it. It's a few minutes of reflection that both demands and creates stillness.

    Once, twice, three times a day. Whatever. Find what works for you.

    Just know that it may turn out to be the most important thing you do all day.

    linkNote: why journal
  • Location: 70 link

    This toxic form of ego has a less-assuming evil twin — often called 'imposter syndrome'.

    It's a nagging, endless anxiety that you're not qualified for what you're doing — and you're about to be found out for it.

    linkNote: An interesting (is it valid?) take on imposter syndrome.
  • Location: 72 link
    Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and unshackle yourself from the need to prove yourself.
    linkNote: a take on confidence
  • Location: 77 link
    What we need in life, in the arts, in sports, is to loosen up, to become flexible, to get to a place where there is nothing in our way — including our own obession with certain outcomes.
    linkNote: Letting go
  • Location: 115 link
    He came up with a good test anytime he felt himself being pulled by a strong desire: What will happen to me if I get what I want? How will I feel after?
    linkNote: Epicurus, wants, #to-journal
  • Location: 170 link

    “Sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?”

    Immediately, Churchill replied, “Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”

    linkNote: #eq, Churchill
  • Location: 246 link
    “If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room,” Stowe wrote in a letter to her husband in 1841, anticipating Virginia Woolf's call for “a room of one's own” by almost a century.
    linkNote:
    • #eq
    • Harriet Beecher Stowe
    • Yes, Maybe. See note from page 98.
  • Location: 202 link
    A routine can be time-based. … A routine can be focused on order or arrangement. … A routine can be build around a tool or a scent. … A routine can be religious or faith-based.
    linkNote: types of routine
  • Location: 208 link
    We don't need to get rid of all our possessions, but we should constantly question what we own, why we own it, and whether we could do without.
    linkNote: the minimalism question
  • Location: 219 link

    The wise and busy also learn that solitude and stillness are there in pockets, if we look for them. The few minutes before going onstage for a talk or sitting in your hotel room before a meeting. The morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Or late in the evening after the world has gone to sleep.

    Grab these moments. Schedule them. Cultivate them.

    linkNote: This!
  • Location: 236 link
    Leisure historically meant simply freedom from the work needed to survive, freedom for intellectual or creative pursuits. It was learning and study and the pursuit of higher things.
    linkNote: Leisure
  • Location: 238 link
    The repetition of a long swim, the challenge of lifting heavy weights, the breathlessness of a sprint — there is a cleansing experience, even if it is accompanied by suffering. It's a wonderful feeling there, right before the sweat breaks, when we can feel ourselves working the stress up from the deep recesses of our soul and our conscious mind and then out of the body.
    linkNote: hard strenous exercise
  • Location: 238, 239 link
    The point isn't to simply fill the hours or distract the mind. Rather, it's to engage a pursuit that simultaneously challenges and relaxes us.
    linkNote: point of hard exercise
  • Location: 239 link
    Of course, leisure can easily become an escape, but the second that happens it's not leisure anymore. When we take something relaxing and turn it into a compulsion, it's not leisure, because we're no longer choosing it,.
    linkNote: leisure to compulsion
  • Book References from Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World