Over the last 6 weeks I’ve taken my foot off the gas.
My discipline has dulled. My motivation has mulled. And I’ve been living with an effortless ease that’s left my mind mostly still.
It was an intentional decision.
Ever since finishing the Ironman 70.3 World Championships at the end of August I knew that I’d need some time off.
My two year dedication to the sport had forced me into a highly productive routine that I’d let rule my life. I’d been living by the time-boxing of my calendar, leaving very little room for spontaneity.
And it had been necessary to achieve my goals.
But, once the journey had come to an end and the achievements had been earned I knew it was time to embrace the slowdown.
Here’s what I learned from the process…
Reframing Relaxation
As someone who lives mostly engrossed in the pursuit of personal productivity I often find it difficult to embrace relaxation.
For me taking time off is not a goal in of itself.
I don’t dream of retiring to sip cocktails on a Caribbean beach.
Instead, I see relaxation is a tool that will re-energise my mind ahead of the next ‘productive’ thing I choose to focus on.
And it’s been working pretty well for the most part.
I’ve realised that I don’t need to binge hours of TV, read countless pages of a book or play the same video games until late at night to ‘switch off’.
I can achieve the same effect in less than 30 minutes.
By which time I’m ready and raring to go again.
So, when I decided ‘Slowdown September’ would be the theme for the last 6 weeks I knew I’d have more than half an hour to explore these interests again.
Out went the 20 hours of Ironman training.
In came 3 series of Ted Lasso, 10 hours of Red Dead Redemption 2 and over 500 pages of Walter Isaacson’s biography on Musk.
(I fully recommend all three by the way)
And it might sound silly, but this took some getting used to.
I had to let the taskmaster of my brain calm it’s neurotic pursuit of endless optimisation and focus on doing things that were just interesting and fun…
Regardless of whether they pushed me forward or not.
Which now that I’m out the other side of and shifting gears again until December I can fully appreciate the value of.
Not only has slowing down re-energised me for the sprint ahead, it’s also enabled me to appreciate and enjoy a few alternative elements of life that I would usually write off as ‘waste of time’.
Building Foundations
The additional headspace of switching off has enabled me to cast my focus towards building the Undefinable Community, where there’s been some serious momentum starting to come together…
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